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Castilleja chromosa
Also called Desert paintbrush, Desert Indian Paintbrush
Castilleja chromosa, the desert paintbrush, is a species of flowering plant in the family Orobanchaceae found in the western United States. They are distributed in dry scrub, steppe, and desert. They have colorful inflorescences which range from yellow to red in hue. This color is given not by the flowers, which are small, but by the colorful bracts. The plants grow up to nearly half a meter (~1.5 ft) tall and are slightly bristly and greyish-green. Their stems do not branch, and their leaves are small and lance-shaped. Partial parasites, they steal some of their nutrients from neighboring plants.
The desert paintbrush is distributed across ten western US states. In California, it largely grows east of the Cascade Range, the Sierra Nevada, San Bernardino Mountains, and San Jacinto Mountains. Likewise, it is largely native to eastern parts of Oregon with only a few reports of the species west of the Cascades. It grows in most of Idaho, but its exact distribution in Montana and Wyoming is not recorded by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. It also has no exact locations recorded for Nevada, but grows in every county of Utah. In Colorado, it grows largely west of the Rocky Mountains. Similarly, it grows in the northwestern quarter of New Mexico and all but the southernmost counties of Arizona.
Coast Indian paintbrush · Johnny-nip · Northwestern Indian paintbrush · Wavyleaf Indian paintbrush · Aquarius Plateau Indian paintbrush · Cobwebby Indian paintbrush · Attenuate Indian paintbrush · Castilleja beldingii · Castilleja bella · Shortstyle Indian paintbrush · Vernal pool Indian paintbrush · Port Clarence Indian paintbrush
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Castilleja chromosa by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
