cute vs. spectacular

I'm not typically a red-flower person, but I do have a few red penstemon in my yard. Of course there are something like a gazillion red penstemon, ranging from the short (6 inches or so) and bushy P. pinifolius to the tall (up to 6 foot) and rangy P. barbatus which are native to New Mexico. P. palmeri grows wildly around my neighborhood, but is quite a big plant in my yard, easily to 6 feet, then after bloom, the basal stems are about a foot and a half tall. I decided to plant a couple other penstemon also from the section Peltanthera, but a couple which are more compact plants. Unfortunately, they are not fragrant, like P. palmeri is. They look almost identical. They both also have nicely red leaves in the winter, which P. palmeri does not. Like all penstemon it seems, they both are very susceptible to soil fungi, which will suddenly kill a plant.

Penstemon clutei (which I call P. cutey-i because, of course, it is so cute), has fatter, shorter flowers, and a more refined appearance. It is also said to bloom repeatedly, but so far in my garden has not. My big plant collapsed this spring from soil fungus, but the other plant whose roots were intertwined, has done fine. The warm weather green leaves are rather bluish, like P. palmeri.

Penstemon pseudospectabilis, I call Penstemon "sort of cute" (although the name really means that it looks a lot like Penstemon spectabilis), because it looks very similar to P. clutei. The name is apt, however, because it is not as cute. It is incredibly drought tolerant, needing almost no water, even in the first year of planting. Flowers are longer, the plants are less refined looking, partially because of the plants' vigor. They grow like gangbusters. The flower stems are not as uniform in length, the stems can be floppy, and the summer leaves are more yellow-green than P. clutei. The winter leaves are a more vibrant red than P. clutei as well. Although it is deemed "pseudospectabilis" is is, in fact pretty spectacular.