Penstemon albidus, commonly known as white penstemon, white-flower beardtongue, or Red-Line Beardtongue is a very widespread perennial flower of the mixed-grass and shortgrass prairies. Its natural distribution is from Manitoba and Alberta in Canada to Texas and New Mexico in the United States. The bright white flowers for which they are named are quite attractive to both bees and hummingbird moths. Description Penstemon albidus is a long lived herbaceous plant that most often booms sometime from April to June. The flowering stems are 8–60 cm in height, but more typically 15–50 cm and stand upright with only a slight curve at the base. The stems are covered in extremely fine and short hairs that increase to being glandular and hairy closer to the buds and flowers. Plants can have multiple flowering stems or just one. The basal leaves are attached with short stems to the base of the plant and vary in shape from lanceolate to obovate. They are usually 20–90 mm long and 7–20 mm wide, though occasionally they will be as long as 110 mm or as narrow as 4 mm. The leaves have various textures, from smooth to quite rough with short tough hairs (scabrous), but are not leathery. The leaf edges also vary from plant to plant from smooth, through slightly serrate, to distinctly serrate. The 2–6 leaves on the flowering stems are similar in shape to the basal leaves and grow as opposite pairs. They tend to be shorter (25–65 mm long and 3–21 mm wide) and clasp the flowering stem instead of growing on short leaf stems, especially on the upper leaves of the flowering stem. The leaves and flowering stems grow from a short, branched, persistent stem called a caudex. Underground Penstemon albidus has a taproot with fibrous lateral roots. When top parts of the plant are damaged it activates regrowth shoots from the crown. The inflorescence is a thyrse with flowers blooming in succession from bottom to top as it grows, the portion with flowers being 4–25 cm long and occasionally as long as 30 cm. The stems have a cylindrical cross section and are densely glandular-pubescent. There will be 2–10 groups of flowers on short stems attaching to the main stem (verticillasters). Close examination will show that each group on the stem is subdivided into a pair of attachment points with each having 2–7 flowers. The bracts close to each flowering