Penstemon albidus (white penstemon)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Penstemon albidus, photographed by Esben Kjaer — fig. a Esben Kjaer, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-07 / obs. 204239673

Penstemon albidus, photographed by Mark G — fig. b Mark G, CC0 1.0 / obs. 135393054

Penstemon albidus, photographed by Chris Friesen — fig. c Chris Friesen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 133251485

Penstemon albidus, photographed by Cecelia Alexander — fig. d Cecelia Alexander, CC0 1.0 / obs. 172965262

Penstemon albidus, photographed by Brian Dickerson — fig. e Brian Dickerson, CC0 1.0 / obs. 40488107

Penstemon albidus, photographed by Jeff D Hansen — fig. f Jeff D Hansen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 21354090

Penstemon albidus, photographed by Meghan Cassidy — fig. g Meghan Cassidy, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 7523673

Penstemon albidus, photographed by Matt Lavin — fig. h Matt Lavin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172174713

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 16 botanical countries

Native distribution of Penstemon albidus, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Alberta	ABT	NORTHERN AMERICA
Colorado	COL
Iowa	IOW
Kansas	KAN
Manitoba	MAN
Minnesota	MIN
Montana	MNT
Nebraska	NEB
New Mexico	NWM
North Dakota	NDA
Oklahoma	OKL
Ontario	ONT
Saskatchewan	SAS
South Dakota	SDA
Texas	TEX
Wyoming	WYO

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 325 in flower of 364 examined

90%

84%

96%

75%

Proportion of examined Penstemon albidus in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	0	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	0	0	too few examined
Apr	19	21	90%	71% to 97%
May	92	109	84%	76% to 90%
Jun	196	205	96%	92% to 98%
Jul	18	24	75%	55% to 88%
Aug	0	4	too few examined
Sep	0	0	too few examined
Oct	0	0	too few examined
Nov	0	1	too few examined
Dec	0	0	too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Penstemon albidus observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 325 of 364 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 3 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Chelone albida (Nutt.) Spreng.
Penstemon teretiflorus Fraser ex Nutt.
Penstemon viscidulus Nees

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.