Indian Paintbrush

The beautiful red wildflower that shares the fields with our Texas bluebonnets is the Indian Paintbrush, Castilleja indivisa Engelm.  It is a native wildflower in the Figwort family. Color ranges from orange to red on spikes that resemble a paintbrush.  These red spikes are actually bracts, a modified or specialized leaf usually associated with the reproductive structure of a plant.  The actual flowers are green and hidden under the colorful bracts. In Texas the blooming season begins in March.
 
Indian paintbrush is found in grasslands and open forest clearings as far north as Alaska.  There are over two hundred species variations in North America with colors ranging from white, magenta, purple, red, orange and yellow.

 
While Indian paintbrush can survive on its own, it is actually a hemiparasite or a root parasite. The roots grow until they touch the roots of the plants around it, usually grasses.  It penetrates the neighboring roots with the root tubes, the haustoria, into the roots of a host plant to obtain nutrients. Plants growing with the assistance of host will outgrow a plant without a host.  Because of this connection with neighboring plants, transplanting Indian paintbrush is difficult.
 
The seeds are tiny, the size of dust.  At the end of the blooming season, the plants dry up.  To collect the seeds for next year, pick the entire dead plant. If you shake it over a piece of paper, you will see the fine seeds.  For establishing a new area of paintbrush, carefully collect only a few dried plants from an established population. Take the plant and crumble it over the area where you would like to establish a new stand. This can be done right after the blooming season or in the fall.   Germination begins in the fall. Indian paintbrush will grow in a wide variety of soils from sandy, sandy loam, medium loam, clay loam and clay.
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Seeds are also commercially available from local nurseries, Native American Seed, and the Wildflower Farm. Because Indian paintbrush is an annual, do not mow existing paintbrush plants until they have completed their bloom and dried up entirely. Mowing too soon will greatly reduce the number of plants the following year because they must reseed each year.