Another gorgeous purple flower of southeastern Wyoming and the Colorado Front Range is Britton’s skullcap, Scutellaria brittonii. This diminuitive plant is very easy to miss because it grows very low to the ground and has small blossoms, but it is well worth stooping over to examine more closely.
S. brittonii flowers generally bloom in pairs in dry forest openings or on sunny hillsides.
Britton’s skullcap can look similar to marsh skullcap (Scutellaria glareculata), but marsh skullcap is found in much wetter environments and tends to grow much larger. While marsh skullcap can be found throughout the country, Britton’s is limited to the areas mentioned above and only a couple of counties in Nebraska, Kansas and New Mexico.
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