Freshly gathered wild, the Indian paintbrush is rare and is one of the best looking flowers in the desert, it is sure to lighten up any flower bed with striking colors. very unique plant that also has some medicinal uses

This Indian paintbrush is under half a meter in height and has bristly gray-green to purple-red herbage. It stands in a clump of erect stems, each topped with an inflorescence of somewhat tubular yellow green flowers. The flowers are encased in bright red to orange-red bracts, sometimes tinted with purple, and usually fuzzy with a thin coat of white hairs. It flowers from May to September. The brightly colored bracts are used to attach pollinators like hummingbirds and butterflies that would otherwise ignore the plant's small yellow green flowers. The centimeter-long capsule fruits contain honeycomb-patterned seeds. This plant can be red, orange, or yellow in color, usually red

 Desert Indian paintbrush (formerly named Castilleja Angustifolia) is a gray-green few branched herbaceous perennial from a woody root-crown with alternate, lanceolate leaves that sometimes have 1-5 pairs of narrow, ± spreading lobes.  The calyx and leaflike bracts are scarlet-tipped.  The corolla's upper lip is about 1/2" long, sparsely pubescent, with wide reddish margins, the lower lip is dark green and only 1/16" long, and the stigma is 2-lobed.  This species of paintbrush is commonly found on dry and rocky slopes of the Mojave Desert in sagebrush and shadscale scrub, Joshua tree and pinyon-juniper woodland to 8000', and blooms from April to August.

The flowers of Indian paintbrush are edible, and were consumed in moderation by various Native American tribes as a condiment with other fresh greens. These plants have a tendency to absorb and concentrate selenium in their tissues from the soils in which they grow,  Highly alkaline soils increase the selenium levels in the plants. Indian paintbrush has similar health benefits to consuming garlic if only the flowers are eaten in small amounts and in moderation. 

 

The Ojibwe used a hairwash made from Indian paintbrush to make their hair glossy and full bodied, and as a treatment for rheumatism. The high selenium content of this plant has been cited as the reason for its effectiveness for these purposes.