Coral Beardtongue

What’s blooming in the area: Tea and miniature roses, Apache plume, rose of Sharon, hedgehog cactus, yucca, buddleia, Russian sage, trumpet creeper, honeysuckle, silver lace vine, purple phlox, bigleaf globemallow, white sweet clover, alfalfa, oxalis, milkwort, velvetweed, white and yellow evening primroses, scarlet beeblossom, stickleaf, goat head, silver-leaf nightshade, bindweed, buffalo gourd, zinnia, cosmos, purple coneflower, wild lettuce, horseweed, local dandelion, Hopi tea, hairy golden aster, plains paper flower; farmers, garden, and plains sunflowers; catalpa pods lengthening; corn beginning to form.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Golden spur columbine, coral beardtongue, hartweig, butterfly weed, yellow flax, chocolate flower, fern-leaf yarrow, blanket flower, coreopsis, anthemis, black-eyed Susan, Mexican hat; buds on perky Sue.

Looking east: Large-leaf soapwort, bouncing Bess, snow-in-summer, coral bells, ipomopsis, tomatillo, California poppy, hollyhock, winecup, sidalcea, pink savlia, pink speedwell, rock rose, pink evening primrose, Jupiter’s beard; buds on cutleaf coneflower, sedum, and garlic chives.

Looking south: Blaze, tamarix, Illinois bundle flower, sweet pea, daylily; rugosa rose hips forming.

Looking west: Catmint, ladybells, perennial four o’clock, flax, speedwell, purple ice plant, white spurge, sea lavender, Shasta daisy; buds on caryopteris and Monch aster.

Bedding plants: Snapdragon, sweet alyssum, petunia, moss rose, Dahlberg daisy, French marigold, gazania.

Inside: Aptenia, bougainvillea, zonal geranium.

Animal sightings: Hummingbirds, swallowtail butterfly, dragonfly, squash bug, grasshoppers, ants, bees.

Weather: Afternoon clouds, with their high winds, actually dumped rain several nights; morning temperatures still fell to 60; 15:30 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: Hummingbirds are a bit like cats. They seem to know the people who don’t want them and elect to torment them.

This past weekend, their number increased dramatically around the house, perhaps because the young were beginning to feed. Usually five weeks pass after a mother lays two eggs before the fledglings begin foraging. I first saw a pair of small birds about six weeks earlier on May 20th.

Once the young can fend for themselves, the females may mate again. In the past week at least one pair has been darting about, often diving within a few feet of where I’m standing, unseen but sensed by their sound and changing air currents.

Many of my neighbors keep red plastic feeders. When they ask me if I feed the birds I say no, but with my fingers crossed behind my back. The birds have sown their own food and, because coral beardtongues are attractive, I let them be.

I first planted Penstemon barbatus in 1995 with no luck. I tried them again in 1996 in a different location where they held on, but didn’t increase. I added more the next two years, but didn’t see any evidence they had settled until 1999. Around 2002 they appeared on the north side of the house among the tiles and since have colonized that scree environment.

Andrea Wolfe and her confreres used DNA to confirm Penstemons evolved in the Rocky Mountains, and spread from there to the southwest, probably adapting to conditions created when the glaciers retreated in the Pleistocene. Scarlet Bugler grows west of the New Mexico continental divide, and along the Rio Grand north from Albuquerque and to the northeast. The 6000' Española valley is at the low end of its preferred range between 6000 and 9600 feet.

Despite their origin in commercial production, my plants have maintained their alpine habits. Not only can the grayish stalks withstand severe winds without bending or breaking, without becoming stunted or dessicated, the perennials retain their leaves in winter. The basal rosettes turn purplish-red when photosynthesis slows and the bluish-green fades.

Penstemons, as a group within the snapdragon family, have been particularly sensitive to the needs of their pollinators, converting from bees to hummingbirds at least ten times. Coral beardtongues have lengthened and narrowed their flower funnels, and reconfigured their lower lips so they don’t provide landing platforms for insects.

The flowers stay in bloom for months, even if the color fades a little: last year they persisted until mid-September, the year before the end of August. Unlike many flowers which immediately convert to seed production, these refill their nectaries and replenish the pollen so hummingbirds can continue feeding and pollinating. However, they keep the food levels low so the animals must dart from stalk to stalk.

I assume this is less a sensitivity to the needs of birds than a reproductive strategy by a plant that can’t fertilize itself. What seed it produces in its hard, sharp cases can be erratic: it not only needs cold winters, but Scott Abella found exposure to ponderosa smoke helps. Before my plants naturalized there was the Cerro Grande fire of 2000 followed by a snowy winter and forest fires in Arizona the following summer which I could smell for a week.

Coral beardtongues are native plants that can grow in gardens in many parts of the country, but there they are maintained by cuttings. It was only when nature, abetted by the birds and man-made fires, could reproduce ancestral conditions that my plants went from choice specimens to genuine wildflowers that could sustain themselves and hummingbirds unaided.

Notes: I suspect the birds are black-chinned hummingbirds. However, the ones I see have the limited coloring of females and juveniles that make it difficult to be sure of species.

Abella Scott R. “Effects of Smoke and Fire-related Cues on Penstemon barbatus Seeds," The American Midland Naturalist 155:404-410:2006.

Lange, Ronald S., Summer A. Scobell, and Peter E. Scott. “Hummingbird-Syndrome Traits, Breeding System, and Pollinator Effectiveness in Two Syntopic Penstemon Species,” International Journal of Plant Sciences 161:253-263:2000.

Newfield, Nancy L. and Barbara Nielsen. “Black-Chinned Hummingbird” in Hummingbird Gardens: Attracting Nature's Jewels, 1996.

Wolfe, Andrea D., Christopher P. Randle, Shannon L. Datwyler, Jeffery J. Morawetz, Nidia Arguedas, and Jose Diaz. “Phylogeny, Taxonomic Affinities, and Biogeography of Penstemon (Plantaginaceae) Based on ITS and cpDNA Sequence Data,” American Journal of Botany 2006;93:1699-1713.

Photograph: If anyone ever doubted nature’s perverse joy in refusing to replicate scientific findings, yesterday a swallowtail was feeding on my coral beardtongues while the hummingbirds swooned through.