Castilleja ( kə-STIL-ee-ə or KAS-til-AY-ə), commonly known as paintbrushes, painted cups, or prairie-fire, is a genus of about 200 species of annual and perennial mostly herbaceous plants native to the west of the Americas from Alaska south to the Andes, northern Asia, and one species as far west as the Kola Peninsula in northwestern Russia. These plants are classified in the broomrape family Orobanchaceae (following major rearrangements of the order Lamiales starting around 2001; sources which do not follow these reclassifications may place them in the Scrophulariaceae). They are hemiparasitic on the roots of grasses and forbs. The genus was named after Spanish botanist Domingo Castillejo.
Taxonomy
Castilleja was scientifically described by Carl Linnaeus the Younger using a partial description by José Celestino Bruno Mutis in 1782. The type species was Castilleja fissifolia from Columbia. The genus as a whole has never been renamed, however five others were described and named that are considered to be synonyms of Castilleja. For example, in 1818 Thomas Nuttall described a genus that he named Euchroma meaning "finely colored", moving the species now known as Castilleja coccinea out of Bartsia where it had been placed by Carl Linnaeus. It is also named Euchroma grandiflora, as another species. However, Nutttall's Euchroma grandiflora had already been named and correctly placed as Castilleja sessiliflora by Frederick Traugott Pursh in 1813.
There are 216 species that are considered valid by Plants of the World Online. More than half, 119 species, are native to North America north of Mexico.
The name Castilleja was chosen by Mutis as an honor for the Spanish naturalist Domingo Castillejo. Castillejo was a professor of medical materials and botany at the Cadiz Royal College of Surgery between 1770 and 1786. Mutis wrote in Latin, "Ab Stemodia quantum ex characteríbus video, valde diversa haec singularissimeplanta, proculdubio numeranda ínter...
