These wands of flaming scarlet are conspicuous along the trails in the Grand Canyon and are exceedingly beautiful, very graceful in form and vivid in color. The smooth, purplish, somewhat leafy stems, from one and a half to two feet tall, spring from a clump of rather small leaves, which are toothless, smooth, and rather light green in color. The flowers are three-quarters of an inch long, the corolla with five rounded lobes and very slightly two-lipped, and look something like Scarlet Bugler, but are smaller and more delicate, and are sometimes mistaken for Cardinal Flowers by people from the East.
Penstemon Parryi.
Bushy Beard-tongue—P. antirrhinoides.
Variable Penstemon—P. confertus. var. caeruleo-purpureus.
P. confertus.
Pentstemon
Pentstèmon Wrìghtii
Pink, purple
Spring
Arizona
This is very much like the last in every way, except the color of its flowers. The leaves are smooth and thickish, bluish-green, with a "bloom," the lower ones with a few irregular, blunt teeth, or with wavy margins, and the flowers, which are the same shape and size as the last, are deep, bright pink, with a magenta line on each lobe and some white hairs on the lower lip. The filaments are purple, with whitish anthers, and the fifth stamen resembles a tiny brush, with yellow bristles on the upper side and pointing into the throat. The whole effect of the graceful flower-cluster is bright, beautiful, and conspicuous, growing among the rocks, on hillsides and in canyons.
Pentstemon
Pentstèmon laètus
Blue, purple
Summer
California
This is very beautiful and varied in color and is the commonest kind in Yosemite, from one to two feet high, with roughish, toothless leaves and several slender, erect, somewhat hairy branches, ending in long loose clusters of flowers. The corollas are an inch long, and vary from deep bright blue through all shades of violet to deep pink, with two white ridges in the throat, and with two white anthers visible and two purple ones hidden in the throat. The flowers' faces have a quaint, wide-awake expression. This grows on dry rocky slopes and is often mistaken for P. heterophýllus, which is rather common in open places in the Coast Ranges. P. linarioìdes, blooming in late summer at the Grand Canyon, is somewhat similar, but the flowers are smaller and more delicate, and the leaves are smooth, small, and narrow.
Scarlet Bugler
Pentstèmon Èatoni
Red
Spring
Ariz., Utah