cream sacs

Castilleja rubicundula is a hairy, glandular annual growing to about half a meter in height, the stem leafy with lance-shaped foliage. It produces a terminal inflorescence and sometimes branches off several more inflorescences. The white, pink, yellow, or bicolored flowers are divided into usually three pouches, making them look inflated. Each pouch is about a centimeter wide and half a centimeter deep. Each flower has a beak extending about half a centimeter above the pouches. The fruit is a capsule containing tiny seeds less than a millimeter long. Under magnification the seed's honeycomb-patterned coat is visible.

Subspecies. Subspecies and varieties include:

Castilleja rubicundula ssp. lithospermoides Castilleja rubicundula ssp. rubicundula — endemic to the Sacramento Valley, California. Castilleja rubicundula var. rubicundula

This annual wildflower is native to northern California, and into southwestern Oregon. It lives on coastal and inland grasslands.