Description:

• Perennial herbs, stoloniferous or with moniliform rootstock; stems erect, ascending, decumbent or creeping and then rooting at lower nodes, terete or quadrangular with angles winged, glabrous or viscid-villous
• Leaves opposite, linear-oblong, lanceolate or ovate, clasping at broad base or subauriculate to subtruncate, sessile or shortly petiolate, entire or denticulate, 1-veined or pinnately veined
• Flowers axillary, pedicellate, in loose terminal, leafy racemes or solitary; bracts 0
• Calyx tubular, 5-angled, often 5-ribbed, ± plicate, 5-toothed; tube cylindrical or campanulate; lobes deltoid-lanceolate or lanceolate, acute or subulate
• Corolla bilabiate or funnelform, if bilabiate then tube and throat broad, almost closed by palate; lips unequal, shorter then tube, posterior one 2-lobed, erect, exterior in bud; longer anterior one 3-lobed, spreading, with hairy palate at base; lobes rounded or subtruncate; if corolla funnelform then tube with throat short and open; lobes subequal
• Stamens 4, didynamous, included; filaments glabrous, arising near base of corolla tube; anthers bithecate with thecae at length confluent at apex or coherent nearly to base, glabrous or pubescent; staminodes 0
• Ovary bilocular, oblong or ovoid; ovules many; style filiform, glabrous, included; stigma bifid, lobes broad, rounded, equal, fimbriate or laciniate, touch-sensitive
• Fruit an oblong or ovoid, loculicidal capsule, included
• Seeds many, oblong or oval, reticulate or tuberculate
• x = 7, 8 (9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 23) (aneuploids, high polyploidy, B-chromosomes - 1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Mimulus L.
  • Linnaeus: 634 (1753)
  • Hiern: 354 (1904)
  • Grant: 99, t. 9 (1924)
  • Webb: 204 (1972)
  • Philcox: 36 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 150, widespread, mostly temperate America, also in tropical Africa, India and Australia
• Southern Africa: Species 2: Mimulus gracilis R.Br., in all areas except Western Cape, and *M. moschatus Douglas ex Lindl., possibly escaped from cultivation in E Free State and KwaZulu-Natal; in moist places