by CKR
There are two sorts of penstemons blooming in my yard. These are almost finished blooming.
These are at the height of their bloom.
Note the claret cup hedgehog cactus (Echinocereus triglochidiatus) in the background and the rapidly growing prickly pear in the foreground. There will be a cactus post in the future, probably when the prickly pears are blooming.
The first, earlier-blooming penstemon has dull grayish leaves, probably covered with hairs or wax to seal in the moisture from our drying climate. I tried transplanting some into a flower bed, and they're not doing very well. The little gray leaves are everywhere in the yard, but only a few bloomed this year.
The second is doing very well indeed. Its leaves are smooth (although you can see hairs on the flower stalk in the closeup. The plant itself looks a bit like the Rocky Mountain penstemon (Penstemon strictus) I bought at a local nursery, but the flowers are a lighter color and a rounder shape. The nursery-bought plant isn't blooming yet either, but that could just be because of its bizarre history in a greenhouse. Could be a different subspecies.
Here's a website with a number of penstemon species identified. I don't see any like mine, though.