Castilleja elegansMalte

elegant Indian paintbrush

WFO wfo-0000590172 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Castilleja elegans, photographed by Syd Cannings
fig. a Syd Cannings, CC BY 4.0 / 2019-07-30 / obs. 47304789
Castilleja elegans, photographed by Rose Zappa
fig. b Rose Zappa, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 23198746
Castilleja elegans, photographed by Rose Zappa
fig. c Rose Zappa, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 23197758
Castilleja elegans, photographed by Eric Knight
fig. d Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 22543461
Castilleja elegans, photographed by Rose Zappa
fig. e Rose Zappa, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 23192744
Castilleja elegans, photographed by Rose Zappa
fig. f Rose Zappa, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 23172243
Castilleja elegans, photographed by Rose Zappa
fig. g Rose Zappa, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 23172264
Castilleja elegans, photographed by Aerin Jacob
fig. h Aerin Jacob, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 44991788

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 8 botanical countries

Regions where Castilleja elegans is native: Magadan, Yakutiya, Alaska, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Québec, Yukon MagadanYakutiyaAlaskaManitobaNorthwest TerritoriesNunavutQuébecYukon
Native distribution of Castilleja elegans, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alaska ASK NORTHERN AMERICA
Manitoba MAN
Northwest Territories NWT
Nunavut NUN
Québec QUE
Yukon YUK
Magadan MAG ASIA-TEMPERATE
Yakutiya YAK

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 140 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -35.1 °C -27.4 °C -19.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 7.4 °C 12.3 °C 17.1 °C
Annual rainfall 233 mm 365 mm 1,359 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 31 mm 40 mm 149 mm

It is found where winters are arctic. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 140 research-grade observations of Castilleja elegans that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 4 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Castilleja mexiae (Pennell) Eastw.
  • Castilleja pallida subsp. elegans (Malte) Pennell
  • Castilleja pallida subsp. mexiae Pennell
  • Castilleja pallida var. elegans (Malte) B.Boivin

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.