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Bush monkeyflower, also known as sticky monkeyflower,
is a leafy, much-branched perennial shrub growing to 4' tall with sticky,
pubescent herbage. This is considered a highly variable complex
of intergrading and hybridizing forms, many of which have received specific
and subspecific names, but which the Jepson Manual has grouped together
as a single species. The leaves are opposite, lanceolate, 1"
to 3" long, usually entire and sessile, upper surface glabrous
and sticky, under surface glandular-hairy, margins often revolute and
finely toothed, and sometimes with fascicles of smaller leaves in the
leaf axils. The flowers are also in the leaf axils, either solitary
or in pairs on short stems. The calyx is a ribbed, green tube
that expands gradually to a slightly wider throat and has five irregular
acute to acuminate lobes, the upper of which are longer than the lower.
The corolla is white to buff, orange, yellow or red, and has an
upper lip of two large rough-edged lobes, and a lower lip of three smaller
lobes. The lower surface of the throat is white-marked usually
with two yellow-orange bands, and the four stamens and anthers are included
along with the style branches. The stigma lips will close if you
poke them with a twig, but will open again later. If pollen was
deposited hoever, they will remain closed. The fruit is a capsule that
dehisces along the upper suture. Bush monkeyflower is very common on
dry rocky slopes below 5000' in coastal sage scrub, chaparral and southern
oak woodland, blooming from March to July. There are four varieties (aridus, parviflorus, pubescens and puniceus) in Southern California.
Click here for Latin name derivations: 1) Mimulus
2) aurantiacus.
Pronunciation: MIM-yoo-lus aw-ran-TIE-a-kus.
Click here for Botanical
Term Meanings.
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