Castilleja densiflora

Dense flower owl's clover

Family: Orobanchaceae · Type: annual · Native

Dense flower owl's clover is a California native annual found in various bioregions in grasslands and open woodlands at elevations of 10 to 1,000 meters. Flowering from March to June, this plant produces cream, yellow, pink, or rose-purple flowers in dense spikes 3 to 25 centimeters long, with white or purple-tipped bracts. Growing 10 to 40 centimeters tall with few branches from the mid-stem, it has a slender, nearly glabrous appearance. Its leaves are narrow and lance-linear, measuring 20 to 80 millimeters long and less than 3 millimeters wide, with zero to three shallow lobes. The distinctive flowers feature a yellow or cream-colored corolla with a straight 5 to 6 millimeter beak and lower lip pouches 4 to 6 millimeters wide.

California counties: Ventura, Santa Barbara, Riverside, Madera, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Monterey, Marin, Sonoma, Contra Costa, Tuolumne, Mendocino, Lake, Humboldt, Shasta, Kern, Santa Cruz, Fresno, San Diego, Amador, Yolo, Sutter, Stanislaus, Alameda, San Francisco, Santa Clara

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