Penstemon utahensis, also called Utah penstemon or Utah firecracker, is a species of penstemon native to the southwestern United States, where it grows in scrub, woodland, and canyons. It is a perennialherb growing erect to a maximum height near half a meter. The thick leaves are located around the base of the plant and in opposite pairs along the stem. The upper leaves are lance-shaped and often folded lengthwise, measuring up to 5.5 centimeters long. The showy inflorescence bears many bright red-pink flowers up to 2.5 centimeters in length. They are cylindrical, tubular, or funnel-shaped with wide, lobed mouths, and mostly hairless to slightly hairy and glandular.
Utah Penstemon (Penstemon utahensis) Flower, Zion National Park, April 2016Utah Penstemon (Penstemon utahensis) Flower Racemes, Zion National Park, April 2016Utah Penstemon (Penstemon utahensis) Basal leaves, form, Zion National Park, April 2016
Description
Utah penstemon is herbaceous plant with stems that grow straight upwards or outwards a short distance before curving to grow upwards to between 15 and 50centimeters tall.[3] All the stems are hairless and glaucous, covered in natural waxes giving a gray or blue cast to them.[4] Each plant usually as a few stems which grow from a branched and woody caudex.[3][5]
Plants have leaves that are thick and described as leathery or fleshy in texture.[5][3] They have well developed basal leaves, the ones that grow directly from the base of the plant, and also cauline leaves attached to the stems.[3] The leaves do not have teeth, but do sometimes have rough hairs along their edges or other leaf surfaces, though they can also be hairless. The basal leaves and the lowest leaves on stems are 3.5 to 10cm long and 0.5 to 2cm wide, though usually less than 8cm long. They are oblanceolate, shaped like a spear head reversed with the widest part above the midpoint.[6]
On the stems there are two to four leaf pairs attached to opposite sides. The upper leaves are sessile, attached directly to the stems without a petiole. They are 1.5–7.5cm long and just 4–26millimeters wide and normally elliptic to lanceolate in shape, though occasionally they are egg shaped. The end comes to a narrow point.[6]
The inflorescence is the top 11 to 25cm of each stem.[6] It will have three to fifteen groups of flowers, though more than eleven is unusual.[7] Each group of flowers has two somewhat separated from each other, though this varies.[6] Each group has two sub-groups of flowers called a cyme, usually with one to three flowers, but sometimes as many as five attached to one point.[7] The flowers are more or less secund , facing in one direction away from the stem.[3]
Taxonomy
Penstemon utahensis was named and scientifically described by Alice Eastwood in 1893. It is in the genus Penstemon as part of the Plantaginaceae family. It has no subspecies and has just one synonym, Penstemon eastwoodiae described by Amos Arthur Heller in 1900.[2] He created this synonym under the mistaken belief that Penstemon utahensis(S.Watson) A.Nelson, a synonym of Penstemon subglaber published in 1899,[8] made this an invalid name and that a replacement would be needed.[3]
Names
The species name for Penstemon utahensis means "of Utah" in Botanical Latin.[9] It is known by the common namesUtah penstemon,[10]Utah firecracker,[11]Utah bugler,[12] and Utah beardtongue,[9] although its range extends far outside that state.[10] It is called Utah firecracker because of the bright scarlet red of the flowers.[11]
Welsh, Stanley L.; Atwood, N. Duane; Goodrich, Sherel; Higgins, Larry C. (1987). A Utah Flora. Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs, No. 9 (Firsted.). Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University. JSTOR23377658. OCLC9986953694. Retrieved 17 October 2025.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
