WILDFLOWERS OF NEW MEXICO

This large-scale lousewort forms thick clumps of 4-feet tall stems with foot-long leaves, yet the flowers are less that an inch long. The plant makes up with dozens of crowded flowers on a 10-inch long spike. Note the fern-like leaves and reddish tubular flowers with red stripes.

FLOWERS: July–August. Stems topped with a pointed, densely hairy spike of flowers and buds interspaced with long, narrow, hairy, leaf-like bracts. Irregular flowers, 3/8–1/2-inch long (9–12 mm), streaked with red, have a hairy, reddish, rounded hood (without a beak) arching over 3 spreading yellowish lower lips with red lines.

LEAVES: Basal leaves to 12-inches long (30 cm), pinnately divided along midrib into separate segments with sharp teeth, resembling a fern frond; stem leaves similar. Stem leaves alternate, scattered, and get smaller upward.

HABITAT: Gravel-loam soils, wet meadows, wooded slopes; ponderosa-Douglas fir, spruce-fir-aspen forests.

ELEVATION: 7,200–11,000 feet.

RANGE: AZ, CO, NM, SD, UT, WY.

SIMILAR SPECIES: 10 louseworts in NM. Fern-leaf Lousewort, P. bracteosa, in northern mountains, reaches 3-feet tall, but has yellow flowers without red lines. Elephant Head, P. groenlandica, in northern mountains, has a 1–2–foot-tall spike of distinctive pink, elephant-head shaped flowers. Dwarf Lousewort, P. centranthera, at middle elevations, is a sprawling, prostrate plant with a short spike of purple and white flowers.

NM COUNTIES: Mountains throughout the western half of NM in mid- to high-elevation habitats: Bernalillo, Catron, Cibola, Colfax, Grant, Lincoln, Los Alamos, Mora, Rio Arriba, San Juan, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Socorro, Otero, Taos, Torrance.