_Castilleja coccinea_
_Flowers_--Greenish yellow, enclosed by broad, vermilion, 3-cleft floral
bracts; borne in a terminal spike. Calyx flattened, tubular, cleft above
and below into 2 lobes; usually green, sometimes scarlet; corolla very
irregular, the upper lip long and arched, the short lower lip 3-lobed; 4
unequal stamens; 1 pistil. _Stem:_ 1 to 2 ft. high, usually unbranched,
hairy. _Leaves:_ Lower ones tufted, oblong, mostly uncut; stem leaves
deeply cleft into 3 to 5 segments, sessile.
_Preferred Habitat_--Meadows, prairies, mountains, moist, sandy soil.
_Flowering Season_--May-July.
_Distribution_--Maine to Manitoba, south to Virginia, Kansas, and Texas.
Here and there the meadows show a touch of as vivid a red as that in
which Vibert delighted to dip his brush.
“Scarlet tufts
Are glowing in the green like flakes of fire;
The wanderers of the prairie know them well,
And call that brilliant flower the ‘painted cup.’”
Thoreau, who objected to this name, thought flame flower a better one,
the name the Indians gave to Oswego Tea; but here the floral bracts, not
the flowers themselves, are on fire. Whole mountainsides in the
Canadian Rockies are ablaze with the Indian Paint-brushes that range in
color there from ivory white and pale salmon through every shade of red
to deep maroon--a gorgeous conflagration of color. Lacking good, honest,
deep green, one suspects from the yellowish tone of calices, stem, and
leaves that this plant is something of a thief. That it still possesses
foliage, proves only petty larceny against it, similar to the
foxglove’s. The roots of our painted cup occasionally break in and steal
from the roots of its neighbors such juices as the plant must work over
into vegetable tissue. Therefore it still needs leaves, indispensable
parts of a digestive apparatus. Were it wholly given up to piracy, like
the dodder, or as parasitic as the Indian Pipe, even the green and the
leaf that it hath would be taken away.