Description: Annual or perennial hemi-parasitic herbs, rarely shrubs.
Leaves alternate, lowest opposite, entire to pinnately dissected.
Inflorescence a spike or raceme, bracteate; bracts gradually differing from leaves upwards, becoming more dissected and often coloured upwards. Flowers zygomorphic, bisexual; sepals united to form 2 or 4-lobed tube; petals united to form a tube, 2-lipped, upper lip folded downwards forming a beak, lower lip highly reduced to 3 small teeth or 3-lobed up to length of beak and often contiguous with a 3-saccate ventral pouch extending along the corolla tube; stamens 4, in 2 pair, 1 pair longer than the other; anthers with 2 pollen sacs; stigma capitate or bilobed.
Fruit an ovoid loculicidal capsule. Seeds numerous, ovoid, pyramidal, oblong or trapezoidal with reticulate and loose- or tight-fitting seed coat.
Distribution and occurrence:
The only species recorded in N.S.W., C. exserta, is recorded as formerly naturalised in Victoria, and has not been recorded in N.S.W. since 1920.
Text by Daniel Ohlsen 22 Mar. 2016, VicFlora. Added by Kerry Gibbons, 24 May 2023.
Taxon concept: VicFlora [accessed 24 May 2023].
| One species in NSW: Castilleja exserta |
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