Foxglove beard-tongue

Appearance

''Penstemon digitalis'' is a glabrous 3 to 5 foot tall herbaceous plant with opposite, shiny green, simple leaves, on slender, purple stems. The leaves are up to 5 inches long. While upright, the stems average anywhere from 2 to 3 feet tall. The flowering panicle extends to almost one third of the plant's height and has pairs of branches which repeat with two flowers multiple times. The pedicels are almost one fourth of an inch long and produce 1.25 inch long two-lipped tubular flowers over dark green foliage. The plant has elliptic basal leaves and lance-shaped to oblong stem leaves.

It is called beardtongue because the plant has a fifth stamen which resembles a hairy beard due to having small hairs. ''Penstemon'' is a combination of the Greek words, ''penta'', "five" and ''stemon'', referring to the stamen, every flower containing five stamens. Four of the stamens are fertile while the fifth one is sterile.

The Latin word ''digitalis'' means "finger": the flowers resemble fingers of a glove. The plant grows in moist, sandy soil in full sun in meadows, prairies, fields, wood margins, open woods and along railroad tracks. Its bloom period is from late spring to early summer. The plant is known to attract, butterflies, and birds such as hummingbirds. It tolerates deer browsing. Native states for ''P. digitalis'' include Iowa, Nebraska, and Missouri although it is less common in Iowan native prairies compared to other ''Penstemon'' species.