Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Herbaceous perennials, 30-100 cm tall, stems few or several, sometimes reddish-purple, herbage glabrous, puberulent, not at all glacous.

Leaves: Opposite, basal leaves oblanceolate, 4-10 cm long and 1-3 cm wide, with petioles 4-10 cm long, cauline leaves sessile, ovate to cordate-clasping, 3-8 cm long and 15-40 mm wide, margins entire, surfaces green or glaucous, glabrous or puberulent.

Flowers: Scarlet, showy, corollas cylindric, 25-30 mm long, glabrous throughout, obscurely bilabiate, the lips subequal and barely spreading, upper lip 2-lobed, lower lip 3-cleft, calyx 5-lobed, lobes ovate, 3-6 mm long, stamens 4 in pairs, the fifth a bearded filament, these included or barely exserted, anther sac dehiscent only part way from the free tips, not flattened, inflorescence narrow, strict, sometimes secund, often half the length of the stem.

Fruits: Septicidal capsule with 2 cells. Seeds small, angeled, numerous.

Ecology: Found on light, dry soils, in dry sagebrush scrub, pinyon-juniper woodlands, and yellow-pine forest, from 2,000-7,500 ft (610-2286 m); flowering March-July.

Distribution: Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California.

Notes: Good indicators for this species are the glabrous red flowers, the roughly equal lips of the bilabiate corolla, and the anther sacs which are dehiscent only part way from the free tips. This description also applies for the most part to P. eatonii, the keys to subsp. undosus are the puberulent (not glabrous throughout) herbage and the included or barely exserted (not long-exserted, which indicates P. eatoni subsp. exsertus) stamens, according to Kearney and Peebles, who note that typical P. eatoni in mostly present in northern Arizona, and that the 2 subspecies occur more frequently.

Ethnobotany: There is no use recorded for this variety, but the subspecies has uses; Plant used as a fumigant and Lightning infection emetic, spider bites, stomach troubles, as a hemostatic, for backache, as a wash for pain and healing of burns, and a poultice of plant applied to snakebites. Plant used for livestock with colic. Flowers used to indicate when watermelon planting was over. Plant associated with east direction, used in the Po-wa-mu ceremony.

Synonyms: None

Editor: LCrumbacher 2012

Etymology: Penstemon comes from the Latin penna, "feather," and seta, "a bristle," thus literally, "feather-bristled," because some species have plumose or feathery bristles, while eatonii is named after American botanist Daniel Cady Eaton (1834-1895), and undosus means waved, wavy.