Annual or rarely perennial herbs, mostly with alternate leaves, and yellow white or purplish flowers, in bracted usually dense spikes, the bracts sometimes brightly colored. Calyx tubular or tubular-campanulate, 4-cleft, or sometimes split down both sides. Corolla very irregular, the tube slender, the limb 2-lipped; upper lip little if any longer than the 3-lobed 1-3-saccate lower one. Stamens 4, didynamous, ascending under the upper lip; anther-sacs dissimilar, the outer one affixed by its middle, the inner pendulous from its upper end, commonly smaller. Style filiform; stigma entire. Capsule oblong, loculicidally dehiscent, many-seeded. Seeds reticulated. [Greek, erect-fruit]

About 30 species, natives of America, mostly of the western United States, 1 or 2 Andean. Type species: Orthocarpus Iuteus Nutt.

1. Orthocarpus Luteus Nutt. Yellow Ortho-Carpus

Fig. 3838

Orthocarpus luteus Nutt. Gen. 2: 57. 1818.

Annual, rough-pubescent or puberulent; stem strict, erect, branched above, or simple, 6'-18' high, densely leafy. Leaves erect or ascending, linear or lanceolate, entire, or sometimes 3-cleft, 1'-1 1/2' long, 1"-2" wide, sessile, long-acuminate; bracts of the dense spike lanceolate, broader and shorter than the leaves, entire or 3-cleft, acute, green, mostly longer than the flowers; flowers bright yellow, 4"-S" long; calyx-teeth acute, shorter than the tube; corolla about twice as long as the calyx, puberulent without, its upper lip ovate, obtuse, about as long as the saccate 3-toothed lower one; capsule about as long as the calyx-tube.

On dry plains and prairies, Manitoba to Minnesota and Nebraska, west to British Columbia and California. July-Sept.