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Cardinal flower is an unmistakable bright red (rarely white), orchid-like flower that prefers wet habitats. A mature plant is 2-3.5' tall; the stem is light green, round in section, and hairy. The stem terminates in a 1/2-1.5' long raceme of bright red flowers. At the base of the flower is a green calyx with five very long, narrow, usually-spreading lobes. The corolla is 1-1.5" long and 3/4-1" across; it is strikingly vertically-oriented. Rising above the two lateral corolla lobes and a third, three-lobed, central lip is a tubular structure that contains the fused filaments of the five stamens; the anther tubules are brush-like grayish structures at the downturned tip. The stigma runs up the center of this tube; it remain hidden for a time behind a pair of lips for a time, then the style elongates and emerges from the tip of the tube as a two-lobed stigma. The reproductive structures are precisely positioned to touch (and transfer pollen with) the head of a hummingbird drinking nectar from the flower. The fruit is a small, hemispherical, 1/4-1/2" capsule hidden in the remnants of the calyx. Nothing else in Illinois looks even vaguely like cardinal flowers.

Lobelia

Lobelia cardinalis

cardinal flower [Blooms: Jul-Sep]