Penstemon deustus (scabland penstemon)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Penstemon deustus, photographed by Quinn Shemet — fig. a Quinn Shemet, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-07-07 / obs. 145022603

Penstemon deustus, photographed by Drew Meyer — fig. b Drew Meyer, CC0 1.0 / obs. 137994031

Penstemon deustus, photographed by Tim Messick — fig. g Tim Messick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 145188563

Penstemon deustus, photographed by Nolan Exe — fig. h Nolan Exe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 86866459

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 8 botanical countries

Native distribution of Penstemon deustus, 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
California	CAL	NORTHERN AMERICA
Idaho	IDA
Montana	MNT
Nevada	NEV
Oregon	ORE
Utah	UTA
Washington	WAS
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 148 in flower of 159 examined

97%

99%

100%

Proportion of examined Penstemon deustus in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	1	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	0	1	too few examined
Apr	0	0	too few examined
May	31	32	97%	84% to 99%
Jun	84	85	99%	94% to 100%
Jul	31	31	100%	89% to 100%
Aug	1	2	too few examined
Sep	1	4	too few examined
Oct	0	1	too few examined
Nov	0	1	too few examined
Dec	0	1	too few examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Penstemon deustus 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. 148 of 159 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 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 10 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.

Penstemon deustus subsp. deustus
Penstemon deustus subsp. heterander (Torr. & A.Gray) Pennell & D.D.Keck
Penstemon deustus subsp. typicus D.D.Keck
Penstemon deustus subsp. variabilis (Suksd.) Pennell & D.D.Keck
Penstemon deustus var. heterander (Torr. & A.Gray) M.Peck
Penstemon deustus var. savagei L.F.Hend.
Penstemon heterander Torr. & A.Gray
Penstemon ilicifolius Nutt. ex Benth.
Penstemon paniculatus Howell
Penstemon variabilis Suksd.

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.