Lilac Penstemon

Penstemon gracilis

Bird foodPollinator plant

Growing it

When	Flowers June to July
Type	wildflower
Sun	Full sun
Water	Low
Soil	pH 6–8
Hardiness	zone 3–7
Mature height	0.4 m
Mature spread	0.3 m
Spacing	0.2 m
Years to maturity	2
Bloom	Jun–Jul
Flower colour	Purple read from a published flora
In bloom	June July
Native to	AB, SK

lance-shaped leaves about 8 cm long in opposite pairs

Where it has been recorded

BothSpecimensObservations

93 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. 16 herbarium specimens and 131 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

Moist Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 65 records, high confidence
Aspen Parkland central AB / SK: 56 records, high confidence
Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 35 records, high confidence
Boreal Transition central AB / SK: 18 records, medium confidence
Peace Lowland north AB: 11 records, medium 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

28 documented relationships.

pollen for

A Digger Bee Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Bear-like Digger Bee Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Black-tailed Bumble Bee Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Central Bumble Bee Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Colletes kincaidii Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Eupeodes americanus Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Hoplitis albifrons Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Hunt's Bumble Bee Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Hylaeus annulatus Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Hylaeus basalis Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Megachile melanophaea Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Orange-banded Bumble Bee Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Osmia bruneri Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Osmia densa Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Osmia nanula Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Osmia pentstemonis Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Osmia proxima Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Osmia tristella Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Phormia regina Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Pseudomasaris vespoides Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Red-belted Bumble Bee Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Syrphus opinator Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Systoechus vulgaris Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Two-ranked Bumble Bee Clements & F. L. Long 1923

nectar for

Calligrapher Fly Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Euodynerus foraminatus Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Ruby-throated Hummingbird Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Rufous Hummingbird Cornell Lab of Ornithology

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