prairie penstemons

Scattered along the roadside for about seven miles. Never very many, but all quite a bit taller than the surrounding grass and sweet-clover.

And they're back again this year. Maybe not so tall, but certainly just as plentiful.

The wife and I stopped that July day last year, of course, and checked these flowers out. The curiosity would have killed me if we hadn't.

They're Penstemons. You can tell by the bilateral symmetry (like a pea flower) and, most importantly, the hairy beard the flower has in its mouth.

Hence their "common" name (A term I put in quotes because I have never heard anyone use that name which is supposedly so common. Everybody I know calls these things by their genus name, which is Penstemon.) of beardtongues.

Specifically, these are "Prairie Penstemons," a flower that isn't normally found in these parts. We're maybe a hundred miles or so too far west.

The cool part of that identification, besides the fact I figured it out by myself, is that I had opportunity to discuss these pretty blossoms with one of the range people for the federal land management agency. And he had not known they were penstemons. He had, in fact, taken the word of their number one range expert, a fellow who has been here about as long as I, and taught me many of the local wildflowers that I know.

Who said they were hollyhocks.

Umm, no. They're big, but not that big. And totally different flowers. And leaves. Basically, amongst us professionals, I identified these things first. Which is almost always a good thing.

Stopped again this year, and found a single clump of white ones amidst the pink and lavender. Straddling a culvert. Don't know if they're genetically different, or if the shallow, warmer soil would change the flower colour.

Now, I drive that highway a lot. And had never noticed these flowers at all before last summer. I assume they were part of the reclamation seed mixture tilled in when that stretch of highway was rebuilt, so many years ago. And a year ago, I assumed they had just then germinated because of the exceptional moisture we had received that May.

But since they're here again, or more accurately still here, since they're perennials, I may have to come up with another theory. Unless we're willing to assume their seeds fell off of trucks from the prairie states, or were scattered by Penstemon fairies, I am forced to conclude these plants may have been here for a decade or more, and I just never noticed.

Until I got to ride shotgun, with the wife driving our SUV as she always does.

One last shot of Penstemon cobaea.