Macranthera flammea (W. Bartram) Small

Flame Flower; Hummingbird Flower

Herb

Biennial

Vascular

Flame Flower is a native perennial or biennial herb in the Broomrape family (Orobanchaceae). It occurs in southwest Alabama. Flame Flower grows in bogs, along spring runs, around gum ponds, and along blackwater streams. It has a fibrous or tap root system. The stems are erect, branched, green or purple-red in color, and 4-angled, and pubescent with short hairs. Leaves are opposite, winged-petiolate or sessile (upper), lanceolate to ovate in outline, glabrous, with entire to pinnatifid margins. Flowers are produced in terminal racemes. Individual flowers are on up-curving pedicels. The calyx is 5-lobed, cup shaped or short tubular, pubescent, with lobes longer than the tube. The corolla is bright orange in color. The 5 petals form a tube with the lobes reflexed. It is glandular on the outside. The 4 stamens are long exserted on pubescent filaments. The fruit is a capsule. Flame Flower is a hemi-parasite on various species of hardwoods. It turns black upon drying. Flame Flower is listed as S2 species in Alabama (typically 6 to 20 occurrences, few remaining individuals, or factors demonstrably making it very vulnerable in the state) and globally as a G3 species (imperiled globally because of rarity or very vulnerable to extinction throughout its range because of other factors).—A. Diamond.

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Native OBL (NWPL) S2 (State Rank) G3 (Global Rank)

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