Stats

Lifespan: Perennial
Size: Medium
Diet: Photosynthetic
Biome: Chaparral scrubland
Range: North America
Movement: Sessile
Breeding: Seeds
Defense: Toxins
Status: Uncommon

About

Showy Penstemon is a California native wildflower that erupts each spring with tall spikes of vivid violet-to-lavender tubular blooms that hummingbirds and native bees cannot resist. Like all penstemons it carries a fifth sterile stamen — the namesake 'beard tongue' — inside each flower tube, though in this species that staminode is notably smooth rather than bearded.

Life cycle

1.
seed
A dormant seed waits for water and warmth before germinating.
2.
sprout
A first shoot emerges with cotyledon leaves and a tap root reaching down.
3.
sapling
A young plant grows true leaves and a stem or trunk, putting on height each season.
4.
mature
Fully grown, flowering or fruiting at adult size.

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Taxonomy

Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Tracheophyta
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Lamiales
Family: Plantaginaceae
Genus: Penstemon
Species: Penstemon spectabilis