Penstemon murrayanus (scarlet beardtongue)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Penstemon murrayanus, photographed by Michelle W. （鍾偉瑋） — fig. a Michelle W. （鍾偉瑋）, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-06-22 / obs. 138452660

Penstemon murrayanus, photographed by Eric Knight — fig. b Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 65128068

Penstemon murrayanus, photographed by Sam Kieschnick — fig. c Sam Kieschnick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 8958114

Penstemon murrayanus, photographed by Reid Hardin — fig. d Reid Hardin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194186983

Penstemon murrayanus, photographed by Blake Bringhurst — fig. f Blake Bringhurst, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194393518

Penstemon murrayanus, photographed by Alison Northup — fig. g Alison Northup, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 8927698

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 4 botanical countries

Native distribution of Penstemon murrayanus, 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
Arkansas	ARK	NORTHERN AMERICA
Louisiana	LOU
Oklahoma	OKL
Texas	TEX

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 99 in flower of 122 examined

88%

98%

Proportion of examined Penstemon murrayanus 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	1	too few examined
Apr	56	64	88%	77% to 94%
May	42	43	98%	88% to 100%
Jun	1	2	too few examined
Jul	0	11	0%	0% to 26%
Aug	0	1	too few examined
Sep	0	0	too few examined
Oct	0	0	too few examined
Nov	0	0	too few examined
Dec	0	0	too few examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Penstemon murrayanus 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. 99 of 122 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.

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.