Penstemon debilis

Penstemon debilis, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

Another image from the archives. Penstemon debilis is a rare plant from the oil shales of Colorado. It is found in only half a dozen populations on the slopes of the mountains in a small area of Colorado that has part of the Green River formation - a rock type that includes oil shales.

I photographed this in the late 1990's, whilst starting a genetic diversity study of this rare species in collaboration with some ecologists from Utah who were working on the reproductive ecology of the plant. This is an image from a slide scan.