Beardtongues

 When the forest canopy fills in, the ephemeral wildflowers of early spring disappear. The woods around Panola Mountain seemed almost bloomless. But we found some beardtongues in the deep shade.

Genus Penstemon is the largest genus of flowering plants native to North America and found only here. I don’t know which of the 280 or so species I was looking at. The scientific name suggests that penstemons have almost five stamens — two pairs of fertile ones and a sterile or rudimentary one, which the biologists call a staminode. The common name beardtongue comes from the long, hairy staminode.

Some penstemons are pollinated by hummingbirds, while others are pollinated by bees. Folk wisdom has it that those adapted to hummingbirds usually have red flowers, while those adapted to bees have blue or purple flowers. The beardtongues we saw were blue, but the color was almost gone. They reminded me of old china: delicate, fine, fading.