Blue to Purple Flowers 287 



These handsome purple and pinkish flowers are an inch 

 or more in length and form large mats of brilliant colour 

 upon the rocks at very high elevations. The plant grows 

 low upon the ground and has numerous short erect shoots, 

 bearing the blossoms, which are tubular in shape and have 

 two lips, the lower one being thickly bearded with soft white 

 hairs. Penstemon comes from the Greek pente, " five," and 

 stemon, " a stamen," and refers to the large fifth sterile 

 stamen, which is simply a filament without an anther and is 

 densely hairy like the lower lip. It is to this pert little 

 bearded tongue, which projects far beyond the other four 

 fertile stamens, that the flower owes its common name. 



Penstemon Menziesii, or Small-leaved Beard-tongue, is 

 a densely matted prostrate shrub with lateral leafy branches 

 which bear erect flowering shoots two to six inches high. 

 The leaves are small thick oval more or less dentate, most 

 of the petioles and the flowering stems bearing several pairs 

 of oblong leaf-like bracts. The purple corolla is tubular- 

 funnel- form and bilabiate, the lower lip being bearded 

 within, and the sterile filament is densely bearded. 



Penstemon procerus, or Blue Beard-tongue, has smooth, 

 slender stems and lanceolate, entire leaves. The flowers are 

 bright blue or violet, and are set in dense verticillate clusters 

 round the stem, and in a more or less elongated head. The 

 calyx is glandular-hairy and deeply cleft, and the funnel- 

 form corolla is half to three quarters of an inch in length 

 and slightly hairy, the lower lip being bearded within. 



Penstemon humilis, or Slender Beard-tongue, has numer- 

 ous stems growing from a woody base. The basal leaves 

 are spatulate or oblanceolate and short-petioled, and the 

 upper ones are linear and sessile, also somewhat clasping, 



