Indian Paintbrush in 3 Editions

... of our favorite wildflower guides

When I moved to Western North Carolina in 1994, my aunt couldn’t wait to show me around our county. Within weeks, she took me to a Commissioners Meeting where citizens stood up and heatedly opposed county zoning laws. They still haven’t passed.

And when we hiked to waterfalls on mountain trails, she brought her backpack copy of Great Smoky Mountains Wildflowers, 4th edition. After I joined her small hiking group, she gave the guide to me. “It’s the best,” she said.

Great Smoky Mountains Wildflowers, 4th and 5th editions

This book is arranged by season, starting with pink Trailing Arbutus and ending with red-berried American Holly. Since then, Sam and I have bought the “Revised and Expanded Fifth Edition” and it’s still my reach-for-first wildflower book.

How did the authors revise wildflower information? For one thing, there’s snow now on the American Holley leaves. And the 5th edition ends with snow-dusted Witch-hazel. Compare the photos for Indian Paintbrush, below. Both editions say, “The plant … sometimes known as Scarlet Paint-Cup, is 12 to 18 inches tall, with clusters of flowers and bracts about 1½ inches long.”

The older edition is on the bottom.

On our nature shelf is another book we like for its larger view of the ecological systems these flowers thrive in. Appalachian Wildflowers is arranged by color.

In this book Indian Paintbrush is in the index under Castilleja coccinea (genus refers to Spanish botanist Domingo Castillejo; coccinea means “red”). It is found in the Orange section of the Color Plates.

Appalachian Wildflowers by Thomas E. Hemmerly

The descriptive text says,

American Indians considered a leaf tea [from the Indian Paintbrush] to be useful for rheumatism and other maladies.

In Chapter 1, “People and Their Mountains”, I learned more about Native American medicine in our region:

There is reason to believe that at the time of first European contact, the level of medicine as practiced within many of the Indian tribes was probably more advanced than that of European medicine.

Thank you, Aunt Vera!

Great Smoky Mountains Wildflowers, Fourth Edition, by Carlos C. Campbell, William F. Hutson and Aaron J. Sharp, with additional photographs by …, The University of Tennessee Press, 1977.

Great Smoky Mountains Wildflowers, Campbell, Hutson, and Sharp’s Revised and Expanded Fifth Edition, with additional photographs by …, Windy Pines Publishing, Northbrook, 1995.

Appalachian Wildflowers: An ecological guide to flowering plants from Quebec to Georgia, by Thomas E. Hemmerly, The University of Georgia Press, Athens and London, 2000.

US Forest Service notes on Indian Paintbrush