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.