Goodbye Mr. Mimulus

Diplacus calycina from Tulare Co. Sherman Pass 5500' seen in my garden

Here is a pic of what I received as seed from Alplains Seeds as Mimulus longiflorus. There has been a significant amount of work done on this genus over the past decade spurred on in no small measure by the second edition of the Jepson Manual, the definitive flora of California. Jepson 2 came out in February 2012.

For starters the whole sectionalizing/taxonomy has been revised to come in line with all historical priorities.

As such then all members of this section are now placed in the genus Diplacus.

Of deeper interest to us is the following from this recent Phytoneuron article which was a god-send because I concluded that Mimulus longiflorus is indeed Diplacus calycina.

See here the pertinent section from the article:

Diplacus calycinus Eastw., Bot. Gaz. (Crawfordsville) 41: 287. 1906. Mimulus longiflorus var. calycinus (Eastw.) A.L. Grant, Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard. 11: 331. 1924. Diplacus longiflorus var. calycinus (Eastw.) Jeps., Man. Fl. Pl. Calif. 919. 1925. Mimulus longiflorus (subsp. calycinus (Eastw.) Munz, Aliso 4: 99. 1958. TYPE: USA. California. Tulare Co.: South Fork Kaweah River, 6000 ft, 22 Jul 1904, G.N. Culbertson 4407 [distributed by C.F. Baker, No. 4407] (holotype: CAS digital image!; isotypes: CAS digital image!, GH, K, MO digital image!, NY digital image!, PH digital image!, POM, UC, US digital image!).

Distribution. San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, San Bernadino, and Riverside Co, separated from a Sierran population system in Fresno, Tulare, and Kern cos.

Although first described as a separate species, Diplacus calycinus has more recently been treated at subspecific or varietal rank within D. longiflorus (Grant 1924; Pennell 1951; Munz 1973). Thompson (2005) went even further in including D. calycinus simply as a synonym within his concept of Mimulus aurantiacus var. pubescens (= D. longiflorus), but results from the Tulig PCA and DFA indicate that D. calycinus is distinct from D. longiflorus, especially in corolla length, corolla tube length, and style length. Corolla color is cream to pale yellow in D. calycinus and salmon in D. longiflorus.

Diplacus calycinus and D. longiflorus are essentially allopatric to parapatric. Particularly in Fresno, Tulare, and Kern cos., where D. calycinus occurs completely separated from D. longiflorus (see Thompson's Fig. 63), it appears to be clearly distinct especially in abaxial leaf vestiture –– the hairs are unbranched, broad, and vitreous, compared to the branched, thinner, and dull hairs of D. longiflorus. The type of D. calycinus is a Sierran plant from Tulare County.

-above from Tulig, M.C. and G.L. Nesom. 2012. Taxonomic overview of Diplacus sect. Diplacus (Phrymaceae) in Phytoneuron 2012-45: 1– 20. 

Published 16 May 2012. ISSN 2153 733X

Link here to full article: http://www.phytoneuron.net/PhytoN-sectDiplacus.pdf

Despite the recent comprehensive work on Mimulus to sort things out as to what's what in the 

taxonomic world formerly 

known as Mimulus, one thing caught my eye as I waded through all of the historical information. Mimulus aurantiacus was authored by Curtis in 1796 and the picture that he uses  is not of Mimulus aurantiacus (now known as Diplacus aurantiacus) but seems to me that it might very well be that of Diplacus calycina. See the picture here.

Diplacus calycina

Thus, the first image or icone of a California Mimulus was quite possibly that of Diplacus calycina and not D. aurantiacus.

It is a good garden perennial and performs similarly well to Diplacus aurantiacus. D. aurantiacus is pollinated by bees but D. calycina is done by hummingbirds. I have found it to be a really long-flowering species and it does very well in my sandstone "soil" and full sun here on the east coast of Vancouver Island.