Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Subshrub

General: Perennial 10-80 cm tall, generally few branched, green to dusty green, generally with short-glanduar sticky grayish hairs and long nonglandular hairs.

Leaves: Very variable, linear to lanceolate 1-4 cm long, often wavy-margined; upper leaves often 3 lobed; entire margins.

Flowers: Inflorescence spicate, glandular-hairy and red, bracts and calyx; bracts lanceolate to ovate and usually 5-lobed, tipped with red; calyx 15-20 mm long, tipped with red, slightly more deeply clef tin back than in front; corolla 20-35 mm long, greenish yellow and often with a reddish margin, upper lip about as long as the tube.

Fruits: Capsule 8-15 mm long, many small seeds.

Ecology: Found in dry, rocky soils often in shrublands from 2,000-8,000 ft (610-2438 m); flowers March-August.

Notes: Distinguished by the grayish glandular herbage, its wavy-margined leaves, and its distribution throughout central Arizona.

Ethnobotany: Unknown, but one of subspecies was used for spider bites, and another was utilized as a beverage.

Etymology: Castilleja is for the Spanish botanist Domingo Castillejo (1744-1793), while applegatei is named for Elmer Applegate (1867-1949) a student of the Oregon flora.

Synonyms: Castilleja clokeyi, Castilleja gyroloba, Castilleja martinii, Castilleja martinii var. clokeyi, Castilleja roseana

Editor: SBuckley, 2010