Penstemon albomarginatus

Penstemon albomarginatus, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

I'm spending the week in Nevada doing some fieldwork to collect population samples of Penstemon albomarginatus for a conservation genetics study. Here's one of only about 40 that we found in California. It's known from only one site there and we (Stephen Zitzer and I) spent most of the day walking the transect of previous surveys.

Collecting samples consists of taking about four leaves from each plant, plus one flowering stem for a voucher specimen. I'll be extracting DNA from the samples and doing a microsatellite study of the species.