Penstemon whippelanus

Penstemon whippelanus, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

I realized this weekend that I had not really gone through my photo library from my trip to Wyoming for the American Penstemon Society meeting. I started sorting through the photos yesterday, and hope to have a few to post soon. This is Penstemon whippelanus, which is an alpine plant. It's an interesting species in that it has a wide variety of flower colors ranging from white to deep maroon. It's only found in the alpine and subalpine habitats of the mountains in the Rocky Mountain zone.

This is an example of the alpine habitat where Penstemon whippelanus occurs. It's in the Snowy Mountains to the northwest of Laramie. We were somewhere around 8,000 feet in elevation when we first encountered P. whippelanus.

Penstemon whippelanus is in subgenus Penstemon section Penstemon subsection Humiles. This subsection is characterized by lax inflorescences in loose cymes.

Here are a few more views of this lovely plant: