Penstemon heterophyllus

Penstemon petiolatus

Penstemon ellipticus

Penstemon whippleanus

Penstemon barbatos x Penstemon virgatus?

Penstemon serrulatus

Penstemon newberryi var. berryi?

Penstemon cobaea

Penstemon acaulis

Penstemon menserum

Penstemon newberryi

I dunno what I have done to make it impossible to comment...but thank you so much for your pics. I also have mensarum and cobaea (and strictus, watsonii, grandiflora)...and am waiting for the Hardy Plant Soc.seed list where I hope to find whippleanus. The newberryii is also gorgeous. The rocky mountain western penstemons seem to do quite well in my desert. Easy and reliable from seed (so far) although I treat them all alike in a slightly cavalier fashion - sow them asap and let them get on with it. Some of the blues are heartbreakingly lovely, to be sure.

Keep scrolling down jay. There's a huge blank space before the comments section. But it is there.

I'm growing digitalis, hirsutus, tubaeflorus, grandiflorus, pallidus and calycosus. There are no red Penstemon in the eastern US. There is a red flowered hybrid of P. barbatus that is sometimes availble in the east. Ive tried growing the barbatus hybrid twice, but they never survived our cold, wet winters. I grew smallii for a few years, but they dissapeared eventually,. They were beautiful while they lasted.

A bizzare late blooming P. calycosus blooming now.

Do you deadhead/prune/water/feed etc? I can possibly keep up with a (small) amount of actual work (not vaguely wafting about, cutting a few flowers to take home). Do they seed around? Length of bloom? Garden worthy? I have been restrained with seed orders this year...I think around 30ish varieties (but the Hardy Plant Soc. can push this to ridiculous levels...must be firm and resolute).

The digitalis, hirsutus and calycosus all seed around. I.do headhead Penstemon if I 'm not interested in saving seeds. I don't fertilize them other than top dressing with compost or adding organic fertilzer.. All the species I grow are garden worthy. They seem tough enough to not need supplemental watering, but I water newly planted ones, and I water if the temperature is in the 90s or tripple digits, or in long periods of drought. I don't usually cut them back, but my P. tubaeflorus grew to about 5ft tall this year and they flopped after blooming, so I'll try cutting those back next year. A friend of mine in Virginia, has been able to grow the western Penstemon species by growing them in gravel on a hillside. I just found a 2nd calycosus thats also blooming out of season. I grew smallii because I thought it had the deepest color out of all the eastern species, but I now know that calycosus and cobaea are just as deeply colored. Smallii had some nice red coloring in it's leaves and stems. In the wild digitalis grows in the openings in wooded sanannas, and hirsutus grows in full sun prairies with Primula meadii, blue eyed grass and Pedicularis canadensis. Our eastern Penstemon only bloom in white, pink and purple flowers. We don't have any red or true blue flowering species. I tried growing the western pine-needle Penstemon, and California Fucshia, but they didn't like our cold, wet winters. I still need to grow cobaea and pallida. I had pallida and accidentally mistook it for a weed and pulled it out.

' A friend of mine in Virginia, has been able to grow the western Penstemon species by growing them in gravel on a hillside '

That is interesting to know. I tried the amusingly named P. whippleanus from Jelitto Staudensamen seeds. They were surprisingly easy to raise. But even on the driest soil I could muster - where, for example, Dasylirions will grow without rotting - they couldn't survive the summers here!

Is this individual up in the mountains, perhaps?

Well TBH, *A DASYLIRION*. I haven't planted the other one I have yet.

P. pinifolius grew for years in a similar well drained area, but has been swamped out by other plants. It was never super vigorous, I've seen in looking better in various east coast scree gardens, like Green Springs in Virginia, or maybe Frelinghuysen Arboretum in NJ.

All of the fancy western/English hybrids die out sooner rather than later, unfortunately. (Actually, one from the now defunct Joy Creek lasted maybe 3 years...it was one of their own...maybe 'Wine Kissed'?) The most promising long term survivor so far is something from Issima nursery I don't see on their website now. It has dark foliage and blue flowers, so can't be 'Husker's Red', but I've lost the tag.

Yes David, Penstemon whippleanus does grow at higher elevations.

https://cwelwnp.usu.edu/westernnativeplants/plantlist_view.php?id=60&name=penstemonwhippleanus#:~:text=Native%20Habitat%3A%20Native%20across%20much,in%20meadows%2C%20and%20on%20slopes.

Pics are all i nat observations showing the most common Penstemon species growing in Texas.

More western Penstemon.

Pineleaf Beaedtongue, Penstemon pinifolius.

Penstemon pruinosus

Penstemon richardsonii var dentatus

Penstemon fruticosus var scouleri

Penstemon spectabilis var subviscosus

Penstemon yampanensis

Penstemon metcalfei

Penstemon triflorus

Thanks. I like the look of Penstemon triflorus. I wonder who has seeds of that one.

https://ecoblossom.com/products/scarlet-penstemon-penstemon-triflorus

There are a few places offering it David. Triflorus would be my 1st choice if I lived in Texas.

https://www.google.com/search?q=buy+penstemon+triflorus&client=ms-android-verizon&sca_esv=f8825106c88e8e1a&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWILkCw2rZLlpQazsyHPhpjCbS0IfQQ%3A1725636783816&ei=ryDbZvXDMdqdptQP0PvdwAo&oq=buy+penstemon+triflorus&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIhdidXkgcGVuc3RlbW9uIHRyaWZsb3J1c0jjP1DtJFiWK3AAeACQAQCYAbsCoAGxBaoBBzAuMi4wLjG4AQPIAQD4AQGYAgGgAtYCwgIHECMYsAIYJ8ICCBAAGIAEGKIEmAMA4gMFEgExIECIBgGSBwMzLTGgB6EH&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp

I recall plantng Penstemon "Sweet Joanne" years ago . It survived a couple of seasons but did fall by the wayside :(. As I recall these plants are 'extra' sensitive to less than good drainage. And I guess a less than stellar experience with this specific variety resulted in me abandoning all in the family.

Rouge, Penstemon "Sweet Joanne" is a selection of Penstemon x mexicali, which is a cross between a California species and a Mexican species, so it was probably too cold for it to survive in Canada. There are 250 Penstemon species in north America. Over 95 percent of those are western species. The eastern species that occur as far north as Canada are P. albidus, P. calycosus, P. canescens, P. digitalis, P. gracilis, P. grandiflorus, P. hirsutus, P. laevigatus, P. nitidus, and P. pallidus.

Um, I don't, for one nanosecond, think that the fens of east anglia equate in any way with the various geographies of the Lone Star State...but years ago, I had a very fruitful relationship with a certain forum member (the delightfully named wantonamara) who convinced me to grow a decent variety of caliche-surviving Texas plants (I even dashed off and bought books by Sally Wasowski and Pam Penick). Even though I had proud bragging rights from my small collection of muhly grasses (no-one had 'em over here), penstemons never really featured (unlike dykia, agave, dalea, ephedra. ipomopsis and, of course, grasses). At least as far as growing from seed goes, they have been very obliging plants for me...but it remains to be seen how resilient they are in a Cambridge allotment.

I was reading some interview from one of the gardeners in my favourite Norfolk (UK) gardens - the Old Vicarage at East Ruston...who also favours a fair number of not terribly hardy plants. I was greatly heartened when he admitted to failing to do much winter protection at all, reasoning that these plants are invariably fast-growing and often space swallowing...so every loss (which are numerous in some years) is really just an opportunity. My own thoughts entirely...and a handy guilt-remover when faced with the annual complacency and fingers-crossed style of gardening I generally practice. So, hey ho, down the penstemon rabbit hole we cheerfully dive.

wantonamara - is she still around? She was very kind. She send me an offset of the so-called spineless Opuntia - which you still have to be careful with!

I was also inspired and driven to grow southaestern plants by Wantonamara and Texas Ranger. That's why I grow Palafoxia and Cowpen Daisies. My Glandularia bipinnata lasted a couple years, but I had no sucess germinating Scutellaria sufratescens. My weedy Gaillardia aristata is another plant that was inspired by them. Unfortunately I've never had luck with the Gaillardia aestivalis. I was dead set on having a southwestern garden until I began to realize the enormous selection of native plants in the northeast. They also turned me on to Plantago patagonica which I've finally found seeds for after 5 or 6 years searching. I went searching for the local, few rare patagonica observed on i nat, but they are so tiny it was impossible to see them hiding in the taller plant growing with them.