"INDIAN PAINTBRUSHES"
 Quotation marks appear around the
name because "Indian Paintbrush" is one of those names people give to any and
all red-topped wildflowers. Overuse makes the name practically useless. However, I can't
think of any other English Name for the red-topped plant nowadays growing weedily and
prettily along our roads. You can one at the right.
That's a member of the genus Castilleja, of which Breedlove's Flora of Chiapas lists five
species for Chiapas. Here "Indian Paintbrushes" are called "Cola de
Borregos," or "Sheep-tails." In North America several Castilleja species
are favorite wildflowers so in your wildflower book you may want to see if species live in
your area. They're worth looking for.
The red items in the picture are not flowers, but rather "bracts," or modified
leaves, which arise below each small, barely noticeable flower. The dark-tipped,
yellowish-green items that might be flowers are actually just the calyx's two sepals
extending above and around the very small, bean-flower-like blossoms. At the bottom of the
larger plant you can see dark brown fruits containing many tiny seeds.
During nearly all my wildflower-sniffing career I've accepted that the genus Castilleja
belongs in the Figwort or Snapdragon Family, the Scrophulariaceae. However, recent genetic
studies have shifted Castilleja to the Broomrape Family, the Orobanchaceae, in which
reside such weird, non-green, root-parasitizing plants as Squawroot, Beechdrops and
Cancer-root.
At first this reclassification seemed absurd but then it began dawning on me that
Castilleja's flowers and fruits are indeed very similar to those of Squawroot and the
others, and taxonomy, at least traditionally, has always been predominantly based on
features of flowers and fruits. Apparently all these years taxonomists have been so
blinded by the fact that Castillejas bear green leaves that they failed to appreciate the
similarities of the genus's flowers and fruits with those of the Broomrape Family.
Similarly, until recently taxonomists regarded all members of the Broomrape Family as
non-green, non-photosynthesizing root parasites, but now genetic sequencing shows that the
family can be regarded as being in a state of transition, evolving from a primitive
non-parasitic state to a more complex, completely parasitic one. Castillejas also steal
part of their food from the roots of other plants, even as they manufacture part of their
food through photosynthesis.
You wildflower connoisseurs may also be surprised that the common wildflowers once placed
in the genus Gerardia now have been broken up and shifted to the same Broomrape Family
along with Castillejas, and are also semi-parasitic on other plants' roots.
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