Mystery Flower in my Yard is a 'Swiss Army Knife' of Uses!

For the last four years I’ve wondered at the subtly beautiful red mystery flowers in my yard. They start out as a ‘ferny’ type low growing plant, oddly clustered around an old stump and next to a Manzanita bush and grow into lovely deep red, ‘shaggy’ little flowers.

This year, with my North-state Naturalist blog in mind I determined once-and-for-all to find out just what sort of plant I had. First I went to my woefully inadequate Peterson Guide to Pacific States Wildflowers – ninety percent of the illustrations are black and white (I’ve been directed to obtain a Jepson Guide – the bible of flower identification). I couldn’t find anything resembling my little 7” flowers. Next I remembered that I had been given a glossy color book of Wildflowers of the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve by Dr. Paul Maslin…again I could not find my subject flower. My simple query was becoming quite a mystery! I went to numerous online wildflower ID sites, most of which are rather poorly designed for a search of this nature.

Desperate now to find an answer – and not yet ready to drop $85 on a Jepson, I emailed photos of my little friend to Dr. Maslin. I checked my email daily hoping for a response, but this guy spends like 24/7 with his nose in nature (when not building trails, firebreaks, and generally working his tail off maintaining the reserve) so the response was not forthcoming. Finally this morning I had a simple reply in my inbox…pedicularis densiflora…aka Indian Warrior. Yeah!

That got the ball rolling. Checking the internet I had numerous sites focusing on my little flower, actually a perennial herb. As it turns out there is a reason that it is so closely associated with the Manzanita in my yard – it is hemiparasitic, meaning it attaches itself by way of it’s roots to Manzanita, Chamise and possibly other western shrubs. More interesting is that it is listed on numerous sites as possessing psychoactive qualities, used for such medicinal applications as a tranquilzer, a muscle relaxant, a sedative and an aphrodisiac. How exciting to find this potential medicine chest right in my own backyard.

Even better, the website worldtwitcher.com focuses on P. densiflora’s attractiveness to birds as a source of nectar, especially hummingbirds!

Turns out my little flower is big on surprises!...just goes to prove that if you scratch the surface of almost any creature, you find out so much more than you might have expected!