Parachute Beardtongue
Look first for low mat-forming penstemon with pale lavender flowers on unstable shale, then confirm it in oil-shale talus on the roan plateau near parachute. Those two clues make Parachute Beardtongue much easier to identify responsibly in Colorado.
Artwork inspired by Tracy Felix
Parachute beardtongue grows only on loose oil-shale slopes in western Colorado, where creeping stems and pale flowers occupy ground that appears too unstable for a perennial plant. Natural sliding may help maintain the sparse habitat it requires.
Energy development, road work, invasive plants, and trampling can stabilize or destroy the shifting shale. View from existing routes, never step onto occupied talus, and do not publish exact coordinates for small colonies.
- Status
- Federally threatened Colorado endemic
- Best clue
- Low mat-forming penstemon with pale lavender flowers on unstable shale
- Colorado habitat
- Oil-shale talus on the Roan Plateau near Parachute
Quick guide
- View
- From a legal route across unstable oil-shale slopes
- Share
- Sensitive coordinates only with conservation staff
Field decisions for Parachute Beardtongue
- Notice the mat
- The plant forms low cushions that trap moving shale rather than tall upright clumps.
- Check the flower
- Pale lavender tubular blooms rise just above narrow gray-green leaves.
- Use the geology
- Oil-shale talus near the Roan Plateau is essential context, but habitat alone is not identification.
- Do not approach
- Unstable slopes and tiny populations make off-route photography damaging even without picking.
Good to know
Leave Parachute Beardtongue unidentified when “Low mat-forming penstemon with pale lavender flowers on unstable shale” and “Oil-shale talus on the Roan Plateau near Parachute” cannot both be documented; an explicit uncertainty is more useful than a forced match.
Notice these
- Low mat-forming penstemon with pale lavender flowers on unstable shale
- Oil-shale talus on the Roan Plateau near Parachute
- Federally threatened Colorado endemic