Flowering Season - May-July.
Distribution - Maine to Manitoba, south to Virginia, Kansas, and
Texas.
Here and there the fresh green meadows show a touch of as vivid a
red as that in which Vibert delighted to dip his brush.
"Scarlet tufts
Are glowing in the green like flakes of fire;
The wanderers of the prairie know them well,
And call that brilliant flower the 'painted cup.'"
Thoreau, who objected to this name, thought flame flower a better
one, the name the Indians gave to Oswego tea; but here the floral
bracts, not the flowers themselves, are on fire. Lacking good,
honest, deep green, one suspects from the yellowish tone of
calices, stem, and leaves, that this plant is something of a
thief. That it still possesses foliage, proves only petty larceny
against it, similar to the foxglove's (q.v.). Caterpillars of
certain checker-spot butterflies in turn prey upon Castilleja.
Under cover of darkness, in the soil below, the roots of our
painted cup occasionally break in and steal from the roots of its
neighbors such juices as the plant must work over into vegetable
tissue.
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