Alberta Penstemon

Penstemon albertinus

Bird foodPollinator plant

Growing it

When	Flowers May to July; fruits August to September
Type	wildflower
Sun	Full sun
Water	Low
Soil	pH 6–8
Hardiness	zone 3–7
Mature height	0.4 m
Mature spread	0.45 m
Spacing	0.3 m
Years to maturity	3
Bloom	May–Jul
Flower colour	Blue Purple read from a published flora
In bloom	May June July
Fruit	Aug–Sep
Native to	AB

lance-shaped leaves about 8 cm long in opposite pairs

Where it has been recorded

BothSpecimensObservations

17 squares of about 28 km, each holding at least one record. A square is not a claim that the plant grows throughout it, and an unshaded square is unrecorded rather than empty. Darker squares hold more records, which follows roads and towns as much as it follows the plant. 23 herbarium specimens and 98 field observations this project may redraw. A filled dot is a pressed sheet somebody can re-examine; a hollow ring is a photograph identified by community agreement. Where the dots are dense is where people have looked, not where the plant is commonest, and empty ground is unsurveyed rather than unoccupied. How this map is made.

Which ecoregions the records fall in

Northern Continental Divide south AB: 283 records, high confidence

These are counts of records collected somewhere in the region, which is the resolution of the evidence: the map above shows where inside it. A region with 3 records is not the same claim as one with three hundred, so the count travels with the region. A region missing from this list means nobody has recorded it there, which is not the same as the plant being absent. Records within 900 m of a border count for neither side, because the border is not drawn finely enough to say which one they are on. Source: GBIF occurrence search + PRESERVED_SPECIMEN pass, retrieved 2026-08-24. Boundaries digitised from the National Ecological Framework for Canada v2.2 (Ecological Stratification Working Group 1995), simplified to about 900 m for display: an outline is accurate to roughly a kilometre, not to the metre. How these counts are made.

See every observation, live and current, on GBIF or iNaturalist.

Documented animals

23 documented relationships.

nectar for

A Digger Bee LaManna et al. 2020
Bear-like Digger Bee LaManna et al. 2020
Black-tailed Bumble Bee Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Bumblebee-like Digger Bee LaManna et al. 2020
Hemaris thetis Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Hoplitis hypocrita LaManna et al. 2020
Hoplitis truncata LaManna et al. 2020
Lasioglossum succinipenne LaManna et al. 2020
Orange-banded Bumble Bee Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Osmia albolateralis LaManna et al. 2020
Osmia brevis LaManna et al. 2020
Osmia bruneri LaManna et al. 2020
Osmia californica LaManna et al. 2020
Osmia juxta LaManna et al. 2020
Osmia kincaidii LaManna et al. 2020
Osmia pusilla LaManna et al. 2020
Osmia trevoris LaManna et al. 2020
Osmia tristella LaManna et al. 2020
Ruby-throated Hummingbird Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Rufous Hummingbird Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Scaeva affinis Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Stelis monticola LaManna et al. 2020
Systoechus oreas LaManna et al. 2020

Also worth knowing

Safety

Toxicity not assessed, absence of a warning is not a guarantee of safety

Buying it

About $8–$16 per plant (estimate), usually from a native-plant nursery. Estimate (herb default); AB retail as of 2026

Where these numbers came from

Flower detail: not verified, a genus-level estimate