Castilleja attenuata

Valley tassels, Valley Tassels

Family: Orobanchaceae · Type: annual · Native

Valley tassels is a California native annual found in the Central Coast and Central Valley grasslands at elevations generally below 1,600 meters. Flowering from March to May, this plant produces white or pale yellow flowers with purple dots, featuring distinctive white-tipped bracts that form dense clusters up to 2 centimeters wide. Growing with spreading-hairy stems 10 to 50 centimeters tall, it develops a delicate, open branching structure. Its leaves are linear, reaching 20 to 80 millimeters long with occasional 0 to 3 narrow lobes. The small seed capsules measure 7 to 11 millimeters in length, containing tiny seeds less than 1 millimeter long with a loosely netted coat.

Habitat: Grassland

Bloom period: Mar-May

Elevation: generally < 1600 m

Bioregions: CA-FP

California counties: San Luis Obispo, Butte, Tuolumne, Kern, Tulare, Colusa, Amador, Ventura, Solano, San Diego, Shasta, Humboldt, Mariposa, Alameda, Madera, San Benito, Sacramento, Lake, Stanislaus, Los Angeles, Placer, El Dorado, Monterey, Fresno, Marin, Napa, Merced, Yolo, Calaveras, Sonoma, Tehama, Imperial, Mendocino, Glenn, Sutter, Yuba, Contra Costa, Trinity, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Siskiyou, Santa Clara, Del Norte, San Joaquin, Santa Cruz, Nevada, Kings, Inyo

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.