Human Flower Project


Orrington, MAINE USA

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Murrieta, CALIFORNIA USA

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Princeton, MAINE USA

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Graham’s Beardtongue—Speak Now


The U.S. wildlife service at last recommends a Utah penstemon for “threatened” status, just ahead of oil shale mining.


imageGraham’s penstemon

Penstemon grahamii

Photo: Susan Meyer

Sometimes it requires more than a hiking trip and a field guide. Sometimes it takes the collapse in federal laws, an uplifted legal axe, and the threat of strip mining just to see a flower.

Utah conservationists have been wide eyed about Graham’s penstemon for seventy years. They’ve pressed to add this beautiful lavender wildflower of the Uintah Basin to the list of federally protected plants for two decades.

“The total population is estimated to range between 5500 and 7000 individuals, primarily within lands currently leased for oil and gas development. Graham’s Penstemon has been a candidate for federal listing as endangered or threatened since 1975 and has yet to be listed.”

But last week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would recommend designating Penstemon grahamii, also known as Graham’s beardtongue, as “threatened,” thus eligible for federal protection. A long time coming.

Environmental groups sued the U.S. wildlife service in 2002 to force serious assessment of the risks this plant is facing. Last week’s announcement was, in part, a result of that lawsuit.

But with the latest epidemic of global hydrocarbon-itis, this particular wildflower faces new perils. Graham’s penstemon “is only found on oil shale barrens where most other plants could never withstand the blazing heat.” In Utah, the few surviving plants grow in only three counties: Uintah, Duchesne, and (you get the picture)  Carbon.

As fuel prices levitate, there’s been a boom in oil and gas development here. And since regulations were relaxed in 2005, drillers are now coming to the region after oil shale, an extraction process that actually strip mines the land. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, “The Bureau of Land Management just last week awarded research and development leases to six firms in Utah and Colorado to begin experimental oil shale production.”

Jim Wandersee and Renee Clary have eloquently described the human propensity for “plant blindness.” How very strange, that it’s taken lawyers, a war over foreign oil, twenty years of agitation, and now the prospect of a moonscape just to see “magenta-striped throats and fiery orange staminodes”—Graham’s penstemon, up close and for real.

imageRange of Graham’s penstemon

(red dots in the East)

Map: Utah State University

Would you care to speak out about this lovely species of beardtongue?: “Comments from all interested parties must be received by March 20, 2006. Public hearing requests must be received by March 6, 2006.”

Send overland mail to:

Henry Maddux

Field Supervisor

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Utah Field Office

2369 West Orton Circle

West Valley, Utah 84119

Email comments: Check here.

To quote the Chambers Brothers: “Time has come today” for Penstemon grahamii.



Posted by Julie on 01/24 at 01:03 PM
EcologyGardening & LandscapePermalink