Penstemon Discovery

 I got to show off the delights of Mt. Hough to some out-of-town friends Sunday afternoon and saw a few new (to me) species of wildflowers blooming.  As I look over my photos from that outing, I see several stories that I want to tell.  First, I want to tell about the Penstemons.  There are many species of Penstemon in the world, but to find three in one area on the same day is a treat.  On the way up the mountain we made several stops to look at flowers and I saw a blue species, most likely the Showy Penstemon, Penstemon speciosum.  Near the summit, growing in the cracks between rocks in a habitat that resembled to summit of Gold Lake Road, we found the red species locally known as Mountain Pride, Penstemon newberryi (above).

 Since my photo file is a bit mixed up, I'm posting a stand-in for P. speciosum that I saw last week near Downieville (above) that I believe is  the Gay Penstemon, P. laetus. 

 The third Penstemon that we saw is not so often seen.  I don't know if it is more rare or just better camouflaged.  In any case, none of our group who knows about plants recognized it as a Penstemon.  A search of my field guides when I got home showed that it was the Hot Rock Penstemon, Penstemon deustus (above).  This one is a subtle beauty.  It blends so well with the surrounding greenery that I figure I've probably walked right by it many times.  Click on the photo to see the beautiful coloration inside the flower tubes. 

All these Penstemons, when I first discovered them, were in the Family Scrophulariaceae along with Snapdragons, Monkeyflowers, Collinsias, and Butter and Eggs.  With the advent of DNA fingerprinting, we have much more refined means of determining relationships and we discover some startling ones.  I've written about this before regarding the Buttercup family, Ranunculaceae, which includes many species that don't look at all alike to the lay person - such as Columbine, Monkshood, and Buttercups.  Well, it turns out that the Penstemons have been reassigned to the Family Plantaginaceae, or Plantains, perhaps the most familiar example of which is the English Plantain
(below), Plantago lanceolata, a denizen of roadsides and fields left fallow.  It is not a native species,

and doesn't look much like a Penstemon.  Usually dismissed as an intrusive weed, it is probably never planted on purpose for aesthetic reasons like many of the Penstemons are.