  Mimimulus Aurantiacus. Orange Monkey-Flower. Class and Order. Didynamia Angiospermia. Generic Character.
Specific Character.
No. 354 The present species of Mimulus, equal in point of shew to most of the inhabitants of our greenhouses, to which situation it is adapted, flowered this Summer with Mr. Colvill, Nurseryman, King's-Road. Stalk about three feet high, much branched, shrubby, round, the young wood green, with a tinge of purple toward the lower part of each joint, slightly viscid, as it becomes older changing to a light brown colour, and discovering manifest fissures; branches alternately opposite, flower-bearing quite to the base; leaves opposite, sessile, slightly connate, ovato-lanceolate, somewhat blunt at the extremity, this bluntness is particularly apparent when contrasted with a leaf of the ringens, toothed or slightly sawed on the edge, smooth, veiny; flowers inodorous, large, nearly twice the size of those of the ringens, uniformly pale orange, growing in pairs from the alÆ of the leaves, standing on footstalks about half the length of the calyx; calyx five-angled and five-toothed, tube of the flower within the calyx, narrow, cylindrical, pale yellow, bent a little downward, gradually expanding, and dividing into two lips, the upper lip divided into two, the lower lip into three segments, all of them irregular, the two uppermost very much so; at the base of the middle segment of the lower lip are two prominent ridges, of a somewhat deeper colour; stamina four, two long, two short; antherÆ deep orange, cruciform, within the flower; stigma white, two-lip'd, lips closed or expanded according to its age; style filiform; germen oblong; at the base of the germen is a gland of considerable size which secretes much honey. This plant flowers during most of the Summer, and is increased by cuttings. We know not with certainty of what country it is a native. |
|
