Cordylanthus capitatus, the Yakima bird's-beak or clustered bird's-beak, is an uncommon plant of the Western U.S.
Annual with spreading branches, 10âÂÂ50 cm, glaucous-green or grey-purple, densely glandular- and nonglandular-hairy. Stems paniculately branched; herbage green, pubescent (spreading-viscid and short-glandular-pilose) with long soft white hairs. Leaves of main stem alternate, deeply divided into 3 linear to thread-like segments, 20âÂÂ40 mm; of the branches entire, few and remote. Inflorescences "leafy" 2âÂÂ4 flowered small capitate spikes, 15âÂÂ20 mm, head-like; bracts gland-tipped, of 2 kinds: those subtending the spike 4âÂÂ7, linear-lanceolate, palmately divided (lobes 3 in lower ý), 10âÂÂ20 mm; those subtending each flower entire or pinnately divided, 12âÂÂ18 mm, elliptical, acute, entire, arched outward, purplish. Flower calyx purplish, 10âÂÂ15 mm (shorter than the inner floral bract), tube 2âÂÂ4 mm, tip bifid 2âÂÂ3 mm deep, ca 1/3 of the calyx length; corolla 10âÂÂ20 mm, erect, straight or nearly so, maroon, puberulent with reflexed hairs; lips subequal in length: galea pale, whitish, with a yellow-tip, finely pubescent and dark purple dorsally: lower lip shorter than upper: throat moderately inflated, 4âÂÂ6 mm wide; stamens 2: filaments glabrous or nearly so, dilated above base and forming a U-shaped curve near the anther: anther sac 1 (with vestiges of a second), ciliate. Fruit is a capsule, slender, pointed, 8âÂÂ10 mm long. Seeds 4âÂÂ6, 2âÂÂ2.5 mm, rather reniform, shallowly reticulate, rather smooth between nets.
This plant is endemic to its range, an area stretching from central Washington, to the western edge of Montana, to the Warner Mountains of north-eastern California. It lives in open upland slopes and flats, within lower montane yellow pine forests and Great Basin juniper scrub, in dry, gravelly basaltic soil. It is usually associated with sagebrush, being a hemiparasite of that plant. Its elevational range is from 4,575 to above sea level.
California Native Plant Society List 2.2.
NatureServe Global Rank: G4
The threats facing Yaquima bird's-beak are not known at present.
Yakima bird's-beak flowers from July to early September. The flowers are purple. It is likely to be found in dry, gravelly soil derived from volcanic rocks, within a few feet of sagebrush.