Gone with the wind – Indian paintbrush
Still flowering at this time of year, the flamboyant Indian paintbrush, Castilleja coccinea (also seeds can be collected) has one of the best common names given to a wildflower – someone must have watched the colourful leafy bracts reflecting red-orange paint strokes over the blue sky!
Castilleja coccinea – Indian paintbrush
Many species with seeds adapted for wind dispersal have various helping ‘devices’ (wings, hairs…). In the case of Castilleja, the seeds have a honeycomb outerlayer – nature’s design for helping with the process. The honeycomb pattern is produced by dead, air-filled cells of the single-layered seed coat.
Castilleja coccinea seeds (This is as close I could get with my camera and please ignore the debris)
Castilleja and few other Orobanchaceae present the most impressive variation of honeycomb-patterned seed coat, where both the outer and inner tangential walls are dissolved and all that remains is a loose honeycomb ‘cage’.
About the germination:
I intend to include Castilleja in a small flower meadow, so I gather info and I shall experiment. The difficulty is to start a small population because like other hemiparasitic plants it needs its host plants to help it grow. Mostly behaves as a biennial, and in most cases if successful, it will reseed around.
Various studies had shown that C. coccinea will establish connections with the roots of a wide range of host species. It will germinate by itself but it won’t establish and grow well without a host. The best method is to sow it outdoors in the fall or spring in an area where few preferred plant host are growing (most common: little bluestem, prairie smoke, grama grass…) or in pots in combination with seeds/young seedlings of the host plants (use peat or coco-fiber pots as it dislikes transplanting).
Also, other essentials factors for good germination and survival are good moisture and surface sowing (light sensitive).
I showed at some point another beautiful Castilleja, C. applegatei var. viscida in a mountain meadow from the Wasatch Mountains.
Update after quite a few years: I once managed to have seeds germinated in a container outdoors, but the seedlings perished, in part to the squirrels digging them up.
Second attempt: a bunch of seedlings showed up after I spread a large amount of seeds into the ground (2022). I will watch with interest what happens in 2023!
Castilleja coccinea seedlings, direct sowing on the ground in late fall
And success in 2023!!!
Other Castilleja species I managed to germinate is Castilleja applegatei, sowed in late fall and provided cold/moist stratification outdoors. The seedlings vanished at some point; it may have been too much or not enough watering, hard to say. So, unfortunately I cannot add more about seedlings development.
There are also seedlings of Castilleja miniata, also germinated after cold/moist stratification.
I am sure this story will have other developments in the next years!
Fabulous photos–I’ve never seen the seeds before. I’ve never grown paintbrush, though there is a lovely native which blooms here in late spring.
I took the seeds pictures by chance :), wanting to see if there are seeds between the capsules debris (should have been more seeds but there was bugs damage of some sort).
I’ve seen Indian Paintbrush for years in the west. In fact as you were writing this I was photographing some in Utah. But I had never made the connection that they were part of the Orobanchaceae. I guess that’s why you don’t see them casually growing in the east. But trying to establish them with some host plants sounds like a great idea. Remarkable seeds too!
We’ve also seen quite a few on a trip to Utah few years ago; I still see the scenery in my mind – an alpine meadow full of Castilleja and Lupins is hard to forget!
I had no idea about the interesting seed coat until I took the close-up.