Is Firecracker Penstemon deer resistant?

Narrow scarlet tubes on bare stems, held well above a low mat of leathery leaves. Hummingbirds work it from May through August.

In the wild it sits on dry slopes and flats in sagebrush and pinyon-juniper country, where disease barely touches it; on a garden sprinkler system it grows soft and goes down to fusarium wilt, which is a problem almost only under irrigation. Dry gravelly ground, no fertilizer, long gaps between waterings.

It is slow to start, and this catches people out. Germination may not come until the second growing season, and it will not flower before then either, so a pot that does nothing all summer is behaving normally. Short-lived once established, so let some seed drop. 'The Richfield Selection' came from seed collected near Richfield, Utah, and was released by the Aberdeen Plant Materials Center in 1994.