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Penstemon
Also called Beardtongues, Beard Tongue, Garden Beardtongues, Garden Penstemons
Penstemon, or beardtongues, is a large North American genus of about 280 species, with many hybrid garden forms. Most are hardy perennials or subshrubs that need full sun and well-drained soil.
Penstemon , the beardtongues, is a large genus of roughly 280 species of flowering plants native to North America from northern Canada to Central America. It is the largest genus of flowering plants endemic to North America. As well as being the scientific name, penstemon is also widely used as a common name for all Penstemon species alongside beardtongues.
Formerly placed in the family Scrophulariaceae by the Cronquist system, new genetic research has placed it in the vastly expanded family Plantaginaceae. The total number of species is disagreed upon due to ongoing research into if some of the named species are actually subspecies or illegitimate concepts of previously described species.
Although penstemons are native to the Americas, Europe has traditionally been far more active in their hybridization with hundreds of hybrids developed since the early 19th century. The first offer of seeds for sale as by John Fraser in 1813. The earliest development is somewhat shrouded in mystery; for instance Flanagan & Nutting's 1835 catalog mentions a 'Penstemon Hybridum' but does not describe it.
By 1860, a half-dozen French growers are known to have developed hybrids, most notably Victor Lemoine, while in 1857 the German Wilhelm Pfitzer listed 24 varieties. In 1861 the British Royal Horticultural Society held trials in which 78 varieties were entered. The Scottish firm of John Forbes first offered penstemons in 1870, eventually becoming the biggest grower in the world; in 1884 their catalog listed 180 varieties. By 1900 Forbes had offered 550 varieties, while Lemoine had developed nearly 470 by the time of his death in 1911. Few of these have survived to the present day.
Most penstemon species have one of two pollination syndromes: adaptation to hummingbirds or to bees. The species relying on hummingbirds typically have flowers that are red or magenta, have narrow tubes, and that produce larger amounts of nectar from nectaries located deep inside the throat of the corolla. Bee-adapted species more often have blue or purple flowers, wide floral tubes, a longer lower lip for bees to land on, and produce less nectar. Adaptation to bees as pollinators is an ancestral trait for penstemons, but the derived trait of instead adapting to hummingbirds has emerged an estimated fifteen to twenty times over a relatively short evolutionary history.
Scabland penstemon · Uinta Basin beardtongue · Bunchleaf penstemon · Penstemon isophyllus · Pineneedle beardtongue · Showy penstemon · Rocky Mountain penstemon · Venus penstemon
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Penstemon by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
