Saturday, May 8, 2010

purple owl's-clover
Castilleja exserta var. latifolia
Orobanchaceae (formerly Scrophulariaceae)


purple owl's-clover
Castilleja exserta var. latifolia
Orobanchaceae (formerly Scrophulariaceae)


an "odd form" of johnny nip
Castilleja ambigua var. ambigua
Orobanchaceae (formerly Scrophulariaceae)

Alrighty, this post on owl's clovers just about made me throw in the towel on continuing with this blog. Oh my goodness, I couldn't find decent IDs on any of these. What I provided above are my best guesses after looking over hundreds of pictures. I make no allusions that I key plants... or any of the IDs on my blog. I've heard remarks this method is not very scientific. Yeah, well, I'm not claiming to be scientific, but I do like to know what I'm looking at. In any case, I suspect there needs quite a bit of work done to straighten out this genus Castilleja. I'm seeking some help from someone I found online, so maybe I can reconcile these IDs.

ps 05/16/10 - I've already heard back from Mark Egger who is a CalPhotos contributor and specializes in Castilleja. I've made the corrections above according to his expert IDs. I'm also taking his cue by using variety and not subspecies in the scientific names. With big thanks to Mark Egger!!! I've added his Flickr stream under recommended ID links for Castilleja. If anyone can get Castilleja sorted out, he can.

LOL, my 3 guesses for the last photo of johnny nip were: Castilleja attenuata, C. densiflora ssp. obispoensis, C. lineariloba. Oh well...

2 comments:

biobabbler said...

I'm just guessing, but I'll bet anything with a species name of "ambigua" is going to be tough to identify. =) Great persistence! Inspiring.

Katie (Nature ID) said...

Haha, good observation of the name. Looks like Mr. Egger is reorganizing the whole genus for publications.