Montana Field Guide

Payette Beardtongue is a stout, herbaceous perennial with 1 to several stems that are 2-7 dm tall and arising from a compact, branched rootcrown. The clustered basal leaves each have a long petiole and an elliptic, entire-margined blade that is up to 15 cm long. The opposite stem leaves mostly lack petioles and are shorter than but nearly as wide as the basal leaves. Foliage is glabrous and thick. The inflorescence consists of several clusters of short-stalked flowers in the axils of reduced upper leaves. The tubular corolla is flared and 2-lipped at the mouth, 18-28 mm long, and bright blue. The 5 lance-shaped calyx segments are 5-8 mm long and have a long tip and a whitish margin below. The 4 anthers are glabrous with small teeth along the line of opening.

Flowering in July.

There are many species of Penstemon in our area; a technical manual should be consulted for identification. Penstemon procerus has smaller flowers, and other similar species lack the teeth along the anther sac sutures. A hand lens will be required for identification.

Open slopes in the montane zone.

POLLINATORS
The following animal species have been reported as pollinators of this plant species or its genus where their geographic ranges overlap: Bombus vagans, Bombus appositus, Bombus auricomus, Bombus bifarius, Bombus centralis, Bombus fervidus, Bombus flavifrons, Bombus frigidus, Bombus huntii, Bombus melanopygus, Bombus mixtus, Bombus nevadensis, Bombus rufocinctus, Bombus sylvicola, Bombus occidentalis, Bombus pensylvanicus, Bombus bimaculatus, Bombus griseocollis, Bombus impatiens, Bombus insularis, Bombus suckleyi, Bombus bohemicus, and Bombus kirbiellus (Macior 1974, Thorp et al. 1983, Bauer 1983, Mayer et al. 2000, Wilson et al. 2010, Colla and Dumesh 2010, Colla et al. 2011, Koch et al. 2012, Pyke et al. 2012, Miller-Struttmann and Galen 2014, Williams et al. 2014, Tripoldi and Szalanski 2015).

STATE THREAT SCORE REASON
Reported threats Payette Beardtongue raise awareness that invasive non-native knapweed infestations are active at a site supporting a major proportion of the population known in Montana. Likewise, fire suppression at the same location is likely to have negative impacts on the viability of this species. Because these populations are very small, and stressors are co-occurring, extirpation is a greater concern (MTNHP Threat Assessment 2021).