Published by Daniel Mosquin on June 10, 2019
Menzies’ penstemon or Menzies’ beardtongue is native to British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. Despite growing in rocky, well-draining soils, plants can be spectacularly floriferous as shown in today’s photograph.
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on December 24, 2018
Was this purple foxglove intentionally planted against the orange lichen-encrusted wall? The effect of having all three of the secondary colours adjacent to one another is pleasing to me, whether it is by design or not.
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on August 1, 2018
The low-growing Thompson’s beardtongue is native to Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California, associated with pinyon-juniper and subalpine habitats. It grows in a relatively narrow elevational band (1500m to 1900m (5000 ft. to 6700 ft.)) and is associated with calcareous soils.
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on June 9, 2017
Unsurprisingly, this scarlet penstemon or scarlet beardtongue which I photographed in UBC Botanical Garden a few years ago eventually succumbed to the Vancouver climate. A native of eastern Texas, southwestern Arkansas, southern Oklahoma and western Louisiana, it is a prairie or pine forest edge species of sandy soils–quite unlike any environment we’ve replicated at UBC.
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on May 29, 2017
Two photos taken with some haste, out of respect for one of the local resident killdeer who determined I was too close to its nest.
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on May 9, 2017
It’s rare to find a species whose native distribution covers much of western USA, but omits Oregon. According to the USDA Plants Database, that is the case with Penstemon palmeri (as of May 2017). Needless to say, this piqued my curiosity.
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on March 8, 2017
Visit the temperate or colder shores of North America, South America, Africa, Asia or Europe, and you have a good chance of finding seaside plantain, or Plantago maritima.
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