Both species produced lovely pink and yellow flowers, bloomed during the summer months, and thrived in wet habitats. Perhaps, I thought, these similar species separated by more than twenty-five hundred miles were a Cliff's Notes to monkey flowers; wet-loving, pink and summery. As I have just discovered, nothing could be further from the truth.
Chasing spring wildflowers around California, I have found a variety of them in a variety of habitats producing blossoms in a variety of colors (the magic word seems to be 'variety'.) They have come in tiny, easily-overlooked flowers in the Mojave Desert, they have covered bushes like a hedgerow of Christmas Trees, they have popped up in wet soil along mountainous hillsides. On any given day, in any given location, it has been nearly impossible to not see some variety of monkey flower.
Monkey flowers come from good stock, the Snapdragon Family (Scrophulariaceae). That bloodline includes penstemons and paintbrushes and Owl's Clover and Foxglove and louseworts and veronicas. That's a blueblood line if ever I've seen one, and monkey flowers are among the bluebloodiest.
The generic Mimulus seems be derived either from the Greek mimo, or the Latin mimus. Mimo means "an ape," and reflects what is, in my mind, a far-fetched resemblance to the face of a monkey. Mimus means "an actor or mimic," and refers to the flower's similarity to the mouthpiece of one of the grinning masks worn by classical actors. The second possible origin of the genus name makes more sense to me; some of these flowers do remind me of a gaping mouth, but it's all botanical trivia and has nothing at all to do with the joy of finding a grinning, gaped-mouthed monkey flower.
In the desert and nearby environs I have been treated to the brightly-colored Desert Monkey Flower and the exquisite Kelso Creek Monkey Flower. In the mountains along the Kern River I found Common Monkey Flower. In the Santa Monica Mountains, just above Paramount Ranch, Wide-mouthed Monkey Flower grew. And, of course, there have been the ubiquitous bush monkey flowers - Sticky or Orange Bush Monkey Flower, Red Bush Monkey Flower, Southern Bush Monkey Flower - all of which have proven a challenge to identify.
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