Spotting

I think you are spot on, I would've never been able to classify this, the trip was a year ago and I just discovered this awesome project so lots of thanks for your comment and your help, you can't imagine how much I appreciate it!

It is hard to ID Castilleja to species, sometimes even with the specimen in hand, due to variability in color and morphology within and between species. Castilleja is a hemi-parasitic plant, photosynthesizing but also taking some of its nutrients from other nearby plants through root connections. Sometimes individual plants of the same species in the same area will have different colored inflorescences depending on which host plants the Castilleja individuals are parasitizing. Hence the difficulty in identification. Here's a page with some species-level info: http://www.calflora.org/cgi-bin/speciesl...

They are very cool plants, and your photo is beautiful. Thanks for posting it!