Penstemon barbatus(Cav.) Roth

Beardlip Penstemon

WFO wfo-0001136963 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Penstemon barbatus, photographed by Andrew Tree
fig. a Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-10 / obs. 162710339
Penstemon barbatus, photographed by Eric Knight
fig. b Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203879838
Penstemon barbatus, photographed by mark-groeneveld
fig. c mark-groeneveld, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 160525881
Penstemon barbatus, photographed by Forest Botial-Jarvis
fig. d Forest Botial-Jarvis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 150803930
Penstemon barbatus, photographed by sprcrkwild
fig. e sprcrkwild, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 160293210
Penstemon barbatus, photographed by Reid Hardin
fig. f Reid Hardin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 146219963
Penstemon barbatus, photographed by Jeremiah Degenhardt
fig. g Jeremiah Degenhardt, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 152357054
Penstemon barbatus, photographed by Bobby McCabe
fig. h Bobby McCabe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158270475

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 513 observations

Peak flowering in Jul, from 513 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 21 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 antwerpiensis Tougard
  • Chelone barbata Cav.
  • Chelone formosa J.Thomps.
  • Chelone formosa J.C.Wendl.
  • Chelone mexicana Paxton
  • Chelone mexicana Sessé & Moc.
  • Elmigera barbata (Cav.) Rchb. ex Steud.
  • Penstemon angustifolius C.Fraser ex Pursh
  • Penstemon barbatus f. flaviflorus (M.E.Jones) Pennell
  • Penstemon barbatus f. torreyi (Benth.) Voss
  • Penstemon barbatus subsp. torreyi (Benth.) D.D.Keck
  • Penstemon barbatus subsp. trichander (A.Gray) D.D.Keck
  • Penstemon barbatus var. carneus Lindl.
  • Penstemon barbatus var. puberulus A.Gray
  • Penstemon coccineus Engelm.
  • Penstemon coccineus var. filifolius A.Gray
  • Penstemon coeruleus Torr.
  • Penstemon flaviflorus M.E.Jones
  • Penstemon formosus (J.Thomps.) Trautv.
  • Penstemon torreyi Benth.
  • Penstemon trichander (A.Gray) Rydb.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

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