MIMULUS LUTEUS AND SOME OF ITS ALLIES. O 



Besides Ja,cquin, there was only one other botanist of influence 

 who had maintained the identity of the northern plant with that of 

 the south, and this was Sims, editor of the Botanical. Mai/azine. 

 Pursh, who was at that time publishing his Flora AmericcB Septen- 

 trionalh, followed Sims, and called the plant M. luteus; though it is 

 possible that he may have known nothing of the fact that DeCan- 

 dolie had diagnosed it as a new species under the name M. gnttattis. 

 However this may have been, Pursh's Flora was a most useful 

 book, and doubtless, through the wide circulation which it obtained, 

 and the general acceptance which it met with, overbore all the 

 authority of the more critical botanists, whose arguments were not 

 so widely known and read ; and caused the wrong opinion, that 

 AI. luteus is North American, to become the prevailing one. 



It was in Lindley's time, if I mistake not, that, at last, the 

 genuine South American M. luteus was introduced to European 

 gardens ; and this discerning botanist recalled attention to the fact 

 that DeCandolle had early and rightly distinguished the North 

 American from the South American yellow Mimulus. But when 

 Bentham, the botanist of the herbarium, addressed himself to the task 

 of writing the ScrophuJarinea; for the Prodromtis, although he now ad- 

 mitted a number of species of North American yellow Mimuli, he 

 nevertheless reduced the original one to M. luteus, thus reasserting 

 the view maintained by Sims, Pursh, and Jacquin, and reversing the 

 judgment of Fischer, DeCandolle, Donn, Loiseleur, Lindley, and 

 many more. Tliis is the easy way of doing, when one has in view a 

 large bundle of herbarium fragments, and lacks time in which to 

 study either living plants or authentic figures, or to read men's 

 reasons for doing differently. And so Asa Gray, in the Sijnoptical 

 Flora of North America, not only copied Bentham's reductions of 

 species, but also himself reduced several ilL luteus allies which 

 Bentham had maintained as good species. 



Up to the time when the Synoptical Flora was issued, the very 

 few botanists who had migrated to the north-western parts of North 

 America, or who had travelled there as botanical collectors, seem to 

 have given little or no attention to the plants under consideration ; 

 and it was not until 1885 that any contribution to the knowledge of 

 the North American yellow Mimuh was made by a resident of the 

 country which they inhabit.* In his field studies the author of the 

 paper published in 1885 had found the "il/. luteus" of Asa Gray to 

 be a most extraordinary conglomeration of species. He had included 

 in it annuals of the Californian grain-fields, and perennials of dark 

 forest glades of Oregon ; low matted species of the high Sierra 

 Nevada, growing near perpetual snow, and upright branching 

 plants of the low and heated Mexican border; such characters 

 as terete stems and stems sharply quadrangular, and floral leaves 

 distinct and deltoid, or connate into a single and perfectly circular 

 disk, he had not even seen, though his own herbarium exhibited 

 them well at the very time of his writing ; nor had he noticed that 

 some species were glabrous, others pubescent, others glaucous ; 



Bull. Calif. Acad. i. 106—128. 



