The Indian Paintbrush Is Not Doing This Alone

Wyoming made the Indian paintbrush its state flower on 31 January 1917 — Castilleja linariaefolia, the narrow-leaved one. It is the red along the roadsides in early summer, and it is probably the only wildflower in this state that almost everyone can name.

Here is what the roadside does not tell you.

It cannot finish the job alone

The paintbrush sends its roots out until they meet the roots of another plant — grass, usually, or sagebrush. Then it breaks through the root wall and taps straight into that plant's plumbing, and takes water, minerals and energy out of it.

It is not a full parasite. It has chlorophyll, it photosynthesizes, it makes some of its own food. It simply cannot reach maturity without first attaching to something else. It never has been able to.

Botanists call that a hemiparasite — half a parasite. The flower every person in Wyoming can name is standing there on somebody else's water.

The red is not the flower

The part you are looking at is not the bloom. Those are bracts, modified leaves that color up to do the advertising. The actual flowers are the thin green tubes tucked down inside them, and they are easy to miss completely.

So most photographs of Wyoming's state flower are photographs of its leaves. Mine included, until I looked it up.

Why I keep going back to it

A sunrise asks nothing of anyone, and there is nothing wrong with that. This asks a little more. Once you know what the paintbrush is doing underground, a roadside stops being a roadside and starts being an argument between plants that has been running all summer with nobody watching.

That is most of what I photograph. Things that look easy until you find out what they cost.

The photograph

Wyoming Indian Paintbrush is available on metal, on canvas, and on archival paper. It belongs to Quiet Resilience — the work about things alive right now, somewhere that is not making it easy.