Sickletop lousewort is named for its odd flowers. Each one has a broad, three-lobed lower lip and a hooded upper lip that arches over and narrows into a slender, down-curved beak, like a sickle or a parrot’s bill. The flowers grow in a loose spike above clumps of narrow, finely double-toothed leaves, and their color runs from white to purplish pink. Forest Service botanists note that Rocky Mountain plants are mostly white, while Cascade and Sierra plants lean pink.
The flower shape suits bumblebees, and other bees, butterflies and hummingbirds visit too. Below ground, the plant is a partial parasite. It makes its own food in its green leaves, but its roots can also tap neighboring plants for water and nutrients. Recent findings suggest it can serve as an alternate host for white pine blister rust, an introduced disease of five-needled pines. The common name goes back to an old belief that livestock grazing on louseworts would pick up lice, an idea with little evidence behind it.
On Mt. Hood, look for it in conifer forest and subalpine openings at middle and upper elevations, where it blooms through the summer.
How to identify it
Clumped stems 15 to 50 cm tall with alternate, narrow, lance-shaped leaves 4 to 10 cm long that are finely double-toothed but not divided. Flowers are 1 to 1.5 cm long, white to purplish pink, with a hooded upper lip that curves down into a slender, sickle-shaped beak.
Look-alikes
Other louseworts in the area have leaves cut into fern-like segments; sickletop lousewort is the only local one with simple, toothed leaves.
Habitat
Coniferous forests at middle elevations up to subalpine meadows and open woods. Around Mt. Hood it grows in the mid-elevation and high forest.
Sightings in the forest
375 research-grade sightings in Mt. Hood National Forest on iNaturalist, most recently on September 10, 2026. See them on iNaturalist →