Your best chance may be to dig a few up along side the road. They are a partial root parasite and therefore need other plants such as weeds or grass to keep them alive. Here in Texas they grow wild and at one time I found about 4 different colors so I dug them up and took them home. To make sure they would live I weeded them and they all died. That was when I looked them up to find out why they died. Seems they need other roots to feed them. When I planted them in my yard with all the grasses they did find until some city employee bush hogged them to the ground.

Ditto. I had a whole 'Prairie in a pot' with Indian paintbrush and several other plants for it to parasitize, and it just disappeared after a couple of seasons. Its' hemiparasitic nature is a relatively new discovery, so there isn't a lot of information about which plants it prefers to parasitize, so maybe I didn't have the right ones - although, from what I've read, it isn't supposed to be very picky about what plants it parasitizes. It can technically live on its own because, having green leaves, it can photosynthesize. But it is more robust with a host. I suggest getting the seeds as opposed to the plant, and make sure the soil you plant it in is poor in nutrients. Lupines make a good host, and bind nitrogen to the soil, which might give the paintbrush a chlorophyll boost. The DNR is trying to reestablish paintbrush on a pimpled prairie near here (Mima Mounds State Park). They get plants from a little old lady who grows them in her back yard and they plant them all over the park. Each individual plant has an ID tag, and its location is marked on a map with the help of a GPS. The plants are monitored very closely. All I can say is, if the DNR is having so much trouble growing them, do not be discouraged if you try and fail, or have little success.

I have spiderwort but I dont' have any seeds right now. Spiderwort goes to seed early in the year - so I would have some seeds around june or july. If you send me a reminder email in June, I can send you some spiderwort seeds next year...

Thanks, Janet! I thought I had read (somewhere???) that the Bluebonnet can also be sowed in perhaps August to get the first bloom pre-frost. Otherwise, the suggestion is to plant before the last frost in the spring and maximize the germination cycle. About the most I've personally grown is an African Violet and even Charles Manson couldn't kill one of those puppies! I saw a USA kit that was a bunch of lupines with instructions to plant them in the form of the letters USA. I also saw a yellow ribbon that was a seasonal bulb, but I don't know which ones.