This plant is like a parasite. It lives by siphoning water and nutrients from another plant so it would have to be grown from seed and I think it takes two years to flower.
I may be wrong about this but I tried to transplant one of them and it withered. I thought it was because of something I did wrong until I read about it being a hemiparasite.
I decided I would have to find some seed.

I think the plants that paintbrush needs to be grown with include the Grama grass family. In my pastures, it grows with Blue Grama grass (and a million other grasses and forbs as well).

Seed is available from Wildseed, linked below. You can get it in single garden-size packets, or in all kinds of wildflower mixes.

You can buy the plants online from High Country Gardens, and unless they have changed the way they grow it, each plant comes with its' own Grama grass.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Wildseed Farms website

Speaking of wildflowers, have you ever seen an area that you drive by often, and it just seemed to need some color? Like our roadsides and ditches mostly seem to be weeds? And even when a good stand of wildflowers get started, the highway mowers cut them down before they can reseed themselves?

You have a governor, he's not mine, that insisted the state look good for the sentinel last year and all the wildflowers were cut down way too early in the season.

I drive the 35 (that's what my California friend calls it) down to Sulphur to see my parents. For many years I've loved the variety of wildflowers that adorned the road. Not any more.

Political idiots are the worst kind of idiots. They have power

randy

Got worked up and forgot what I was posting about. Years past I've never had much luck at transplanting paintbrush. They died quickly, slowly, or never bloomed that season. When I started collecting some seed from plants and sowing elsewhere I had better luck.

randy

I do think that some people mow the highway right-of-ways too early before the wildflowers can set seed and it makes me crazy. Along I-35 in Love County there are a couple of places that have signs that say something like "Wildflower Area" which is intended, I guess, to either let us know why it isn't mowed OR to let the ODOT guys know not to mow there. Does it work? No. Those areas get mowed too early too.

We have so much Indian Paintbrush in our unmowed pastures that I've never tried to plant any, but I do collect and scatter seed to help it spread. I do scatter bluebonnet seed, and I usually order seed of the red "Alamo Fire" bluebonnet and pink and purple "Laura Bush" petunias from Wildseed, and I do plant those in my flower borders.

I love the red-flowered Indian Paintbrush we have here. In parts of Tarrant County (Texas) when we lived there, there was some gorgeous Indian Paintbrush that bloomed in shades of pink ranging from a watermelon pink to almost a fuschia. I need to find some of those seeds and try to get them going here. They were gorgeous.

Dawn

I bought an Indian Paintbrush (Castillejo) from Wild Things, and have been reading up on planting it. I have lots of different wild grasses in the yard, and was thinking about planting it with them. I don't know, however, if they are grama genus. I'm gonna have to do a search to find out.

Susan

Susan,

I think they will grow with lots of other native plants--it is just that the Grama grass family is one that they are CERTAIN of. With some of the other native plants, it is "iffy" and opinions vary.

Dawn

I looked up some images of grama grass and you know I let about every plant and its brother grow in my yard, right? I think I have some that very closely, if not on the spot, resembles grama grass. I am going to plant my little IP there and see what happens. It's already turning red at the tips! It's like poinsettia. The leaves turn red at the tips and then the tiny flowers come out that are rather insignificant compared to the bracts.

Susan