Superb Beardtongue

Superb penstemons have flowering stems that are typically 30 to 120 centimeters (12–47 in), but occasionally as much as 1.6 meters (5.2 ft) tall. The hairless stems are glaucous, covered in surface waxes giving a gray-blue cast to the underlying color, which can be red-purple. Its leaves are also hairless and glaucous and are both attached to the stems and directly to the base of the plants, but these lower basal leaves are often missing when flowering. The basal leaves and the lowest ones on the stems are 4–16 centimeters long but just 1.4–4 cm wide. The stems have three to eight leaf pairs with the upper ones typically measuring 4.4–11.5 cm long, though occasionally as short as 1.7 cm. The flowers are trumpet shaped and only weakly two-lipped, each of the five lobes nearly the same size and spacing around the mouth of the flower. The fused petals are coral-pink to solidly red and 1.7–2.2 cm long; they never have floral guide lines. They are attached to the inflorescence in 9 to 20 well spaced groups, though usually there are not more than twelve. Each point of attachment can have one to nine flowers. …

Superb penstemons are native to the northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. The Natural Resources Conservation Service reports the species as growing in just Grant and Hidalgo counties in southwestern New Mexico. In Arizona six counties in the eastern and southern parts of the state. In Mexico it also grows in two states Sonora in northwestern Mexico and Chihuahua to the east. This species is associated with desert grasslands, pinyon–juniper woodlands, and oak woodlands on slopes and in arroyos. Superb penstemons grows on sandy or gravelly soils.