MIMULUS. 
delicate bushes of 4 or 5 inches, dainty with little leaves on wiry little 
unbranched stems, each standing up distinct and by itself from the 
root-stock, and so making a notably graceful and lacy effect— 
M. filiformis having pale-pink flowers and being altogether like an 
erect version of M. microphylla, while charming M. Piperella is bright 
with blossoms of clearer rose. As for M. pamphylica, this is a plant 
of some 3 to 6 inches, with M. Haussknechtii, a little taller, from the 
limy crevices of the Persian Alps. The whole family has a brisk 
refined charm that is too often overlooked, dowdiness and coarse 
dullness being too universally postulated in Labiatae, with the result 
that a group like this has never yet come to its own, though nothing 
can well be prettier than the tufts of M. Piperella, for instance, sprouting 
in stiff little threadlike erect stems, from the hot boulders of San 
Dalmazzo de Tenda, supra-trichomanoid in fine elegance, even without 
the dainty grace of the bright thyme-flowers with which the aspiring 
stems conclude in summer and autumn. 
Microulia is a small race of Borragineae, of which M. sikkimensis 
has lately come into cultivation, while M. Benthami is a very high- 
alpine from Parang, forming close tufts of leaves longer than the 
flower-spikes of 2 inches or so, that carry blossoms large and beautiful 
for so minute a plant. 
Mimulus.—The Monkey-flowers, or Musks, are often coarse and 
rampant ; they may be trusted to make themselves at home—if not, 
indeed, excessively—and fill the summer with show. Among the best, 
however, are some of the garden hybrids now being raised from M. 
alpinus, which they exceed in size of blossom, but not in stature, making 
glossy mats of foliage which they decorate in early summer with stems 
of not more than 6 inches, deploying enormous flowers of crimson- 
velvet or salmon-scariet, together with many other forms mottled 
and blotched, and splendid in a morbid and perverse flimsiness of 
pardlike spottings, rather suggestive of monstrous paper flowers in 
a pantomime, out of which are to issue toads or goblins. The pure- 
coloured forms are M. Brilliant and M. Model ; they are the most 
beautiful of all, rosy or vermilion, but should be looked after and 
propagated yearly lest they suddenly die out. Less beautiful by a 
great deal are the larger hybrids and species, and often too coarse 
for admittance even to the bog. On the other hand, some of them 
are low and useful, all seeding readily, and almost too readily to be 
multiplied by cuttings taken off at any time. The race often merges 
into Mazus, q.v. 
M. alpinus is only about 4 inches high, with flowers of coppery- 
yellow. 
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