34 Nebraskaland • October 2021
Nebraska — and nowhere else on Earth. The species cannot
tolerate competition from other plants, thus its predilection
to grow on bare, mostly un-vegetated sand. A short-lived
perennial, it often forms multi-stemmed clumps reaching
up to 2 feet in height. Its pink to milky blue fl owers, which
have a sweet fragrance reminiscent of vanilla, grace the open
sands from late May through June.
In the early 1900s, blowouts were abundant in the
Sandhills, and a botanist described blowout penstemon
as "one of the more common and typical species" of this
habitat. At the time, perhaps millions of plants grew
scattered across the dunes, but remarkably, by 1940, the
plant was thought to be extinct. A wetter climate beginning
in the early 1900s, coupled with settlers' control of wildfi res
and their later use of conservative grazing practices with
lower stocking rates and cattle rotated between pastures,
had eliminated most blowouts.
Fortunately, blowout penstemon was re-discovered in
1968; however, surveys conducted through the early 1980s
located only 600 plants. Soon thereafter, it was listed as
federally endangered. By the mid-1990s, botanists had
located a few thousand additional plants in the Sandhills
and discovered the Wyoming population, consisting of about
8,000 plants.
In the late 1980s, ecologists began planting greenhouse-
grown blowout penstemon seedlings into blowouts on
national wildlife refuges, national forests and private ranches
in the Sandhills. At the time, establishing populations from
seed was deemed infeasible due to lack of an abundant seed
source. Plus, the hard-coated seeds were thought to take
decades to germinate in the wild. In the greenhouse, seeds
were acid-treated to break down the seed coat and stimulate
germination.
Hand-planting greenhouse-grown blowout penstemon
had limitations. Growing the seedlings was time-consuming
and expensive, and many of the seedlings did not survive
transplanting into blowouts. The greatest issue, however,
was that most blowouts today are inactive with little blowing
sand. Stable sands meant that over time prairie grasses and
wildfl owers invaded the blowouts and out-competed the
planted penstemons, leading to their decline. Staff at the
Bison grazing Sandhills dune prairie on the Spikebox Ranch. BOB GRIER, NEBRASKALAND
Blowout penstemon seeds have a hard coat allowing them
to survive for decades buried in sand. GERRY STEINAUER, NEBRASKALAND
