Castilleja foliolosa

Woolly paintbrush, Woolly Paintbrush

Family: Orobanchaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Woolly paintbrush is a California native perennial herb found in northern Coast Ranges, Sierra Nevada foothills, central and southwestern California, and the southwestern edge of the Mojave Desert on dry, open, rocky slopes and chaparral edges at elevations below 1,800 meters. Flowering from March to June, this plant produces distinctive orange-red flowers with pale margins, forming showy clusters 3 to 20 centimeters long. Growing 30 to 60 centimeters tall with much-branched stems covered in woolly, felt-like white to gray hairs, it develops short axillary shoots. Its leaves are slender, 10 to 50 millimeters long, with linear shape and 0 to 3 obtuse-tipped lobes. The fruit is 10 to 15 millimeters long with seeds featuring a deeply netted coat with ladder-like walls.

Habitat: Dry, open, rocky slopes, edges of chaparral

Bloom period: Mar-Jun

Elevation: < 1800 m

Bioregions: NCoR, SNF, CW, SW, sw edge DMoj

California counties: San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Orange, Riverside, Los Angeles, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Solano, San Benito, Fresno, Lake, Calaveras, Mariposa, Tehama, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Sacramento, Monterey, Colusa, Alameda, Napa, San Diego, Ventura, Imperial, Amador, Marin, Sonoma, Kern, Tuolumne, Placer, El Dorado, Stanislaus, Kings, San Joaquin, Glenn, Merced, Yolo, Mendocino, Humboldt, Butte

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