Yellow monkeyflower is an erect, slender-stemmed, viscid-pubescent, annual from 4" to 32" tall with alternate, ovate lower leaves and opposite, linear to lanceolate upper leaves that blooms from April to June.  The leaves are sessile or nearly so.  The flowers develop on short stems that arise from the leaf axils.  The calyx is 5-cleft and woolly, 3/4" to 1" long, the ridges green with white intervening spaces.  The corolla is bilabiate to 2" long with a two-lobed upper lip, a three-lobed lower lip, and a pair of puberulent ridges running down the open throat. Yellow monkeyflower inhabits dry, bare or exposed areas to 5000' in chaparral or coastal sage scrub, usually inland, and may be found especially after fires or other disturbances.  It ranges from Lower California to Santa Barbara Co.  It has also been called wide throat monkey flower. These pictures were taken along a part of the Backbone Trail in the Santa Monica Mts National Recreational Area between Encinal Road and Zuma Ridge Motorway, and this was the only time I have ever seen a white Mimulus brevipes.

Click here for Latin name derivations: 1) Mimulus 2) brevipes.
Pronunciation: MIM-yoo-lus BRE-vi-pees.
Click here for Botanical Term Meanings.