Dicranostegia is a monotypic genus of hemiparasitic flowering plants belonging to the family Orobanchaceae, containing the species Dicranostegia orcuttiana, commonly known as '''Orcutt's bird's beak or Baja bird's beak'''. It is near-endemic to Baja California, found from Miller's Landing north to Tijuana, but has a few occurrences in southern San Diego County, California. It is differentiated among other similar species (like Cordylanthus spp.) in California by its leaves with 8 to 11 lateral lobes that are paired. It was formerly placed in the genus Cordylanthus until phylogenetic analysis l
GENUS
via GBIF
Dicranostegia is a monotypic genus of hemiparasitic flowering plants belonging to the family Orobanchaceae, containing the species Dicranostegia orcuttiana, commonly known as '''Orcutt's bird's beak or Baja bird's beak'''. It is near-endemic to Baja California, found from Miller's Landing north to Tijuana, but has a few occurrences in southern San Diego County, California. It is differentiated among other similar species (like Cordylanthus spp.) in California by its leaves with 8 to 11 lateral lobes that are paired. It was formerly placed in the genus Cordylanthus until phylogenetic analysis led to it being split off. This species is threatened by the destruction of its habitat from urbanization.
== Description == This annual hemiparasitic herb grows to in height and is green with dark-red markings, and often coated in stiff hairs. The roots are mostly yellowish in color, and form haustoria on their finer branches. The leaves are pinnately divided, arranged alternately, and are sessile. The pinnate leaves are lobed 8–11 times, and are long.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).