MIMULUS CARDINALIS Douglas ex Bentham (SCARLET MONKEY FLOWER), AND WHERE IN THE CALIFORNIA COAST RANGES DID DAVID DOUGLAS FIND THE CLOSELY RELATED MIMULUS LEWISII Pursh? By David Rogers Due to its salient corollas, Mimulus cardinalis is one of the most conspicuous (and thus most well known) of the native wildflowers that occur in wet or moist habitats in western North America. Although this species is most often encountered along perennial streams, it can also be found at springs, seeps, and in other kinds of wet or perpetually moist habitats, such as in hanging gardens on seepy cliffs, or at the bases of cliffs where water from a overhanging seep drips. The first scientific specimens of Mimulus cardin- alis, along with the seeds by which it was intro- duced into European gardens, were collected by David Douglas, the famous botanical explorer of western North America, during his extended stay in California in the early 1830s. In a letter to his men- tor, Sir William Jackson Hooker, datelined “Monte- rey, Upper California, Nov. 23rd, 1831,” Douglas noted that “To Mimulus I have added several, among them the magnificent M. cardinalis.”1 Douglas was then on his second expedition to western North America on behalf of the Horticul- tural Society of London, to which he sent his col- lections of plant specimens and seeds; Douglas also made duplicate collections, which he sent to Hooker in Scotland. On the receiving end in London there were two gentlemen who, like Sir William Jackson Hooker, rank amongst the most famous botanists of th the 19 century: George Bentham, the secretary of David Douglas (1799-1834), as portrayed in volume two of The the Horticultural Society, and John Lindley, the Companion to the Botanical Magazine (1836). At an early age assistant secretary. Douglas exhibited a keen interest in nature, which increasingly The first published description of Mimulus car- became focused on plants as he matured. It was while he was a student at the Glasgow Botanic Garden (in 1820 or 1821) that dinalis was on page 28 of George Bentham’s Scro- he met Sir William Jackson Hooker, and according to Hooker, phularineae Indicae: A synopsis of the East Indian Douglas was “A diligent attendant at the botanical lectures Scrophularineae contained in the collections pres- given by the Professor of Botany in the hall of the garden.” ented by the East India Company to the Linnaean Douglas became Hooker’s “Favorite companion” on his Society of London, and in those of Mr. Royle and botanical outings to the Scottish highlands and islands (Hooker others; with some general observations on the was then working on his Flora Scotica), and according to affinities and subdivisions of the order; Bentham’s Hooker, Douglas’s “Great activity, undaunted courage, singular abstemiousness, and energetic zeal, at once pointed him out as text was published in 1835. This text also included an individual eminently calculated to do himself credit as a the first published descriptions of a number of other scientific traveler.” Hooker felt very privileged to recommend plants that Douglas had recently sent from Cali- Douglas as a botanical explorer to the Horticultural Society of fornia, such as Penstemon centranthifolius (Scarlet London, and Douglas departed for London in the spring of Bugler), Keckiella cordifolia (Heart Leaf Penstemon), 1823.2 In the same year Douglas made an expedition to Castilleja exserta (Common Owl’s Clover), Castilleja eastern North America, and in 1824 and 1829 he began two much more ambitious and lengthy expeditions to western North densiflora (Strait Beaked Owl’s Clover) and Triphys- America. Douglas died in Hawaii in July of 1834; his mangled aria eriantha (Johnny Tuck or Butter and Eggs). The body was found in a pit trap for feral cattle. text for Mimulus cardinalis in Scrophularineae In- dicae is as follows: 8. M. CARDINALIS (Dougl. MSS), villous, foliis amplexi- caulibus ovatis margine eroso-dentatis, pedunculis folio longioribus, calycibus amplis inflato-tubuloris vix plicatis, dentibus aratis acutis, antheris villosus.—California, Douglas. In a number of botanical and horticultural texts dating to the mid 1800s, the authorship of Mimulus cardinalis is Douglas ex Lindley, for in the later part of the year in which Bentham’s text was published, John Lindley wrote an apparently more widely read English language description of the species, and it was assumed that Lindley’s text was the first to be published. Lindley’s text, in volume two of the se- cond series of the Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London, is as follows: Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785-1865), one of the most th prominent and prolific botanists of the 19 century, was the XI. Note upon Mimulus cardinalis; a new, hardy, Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Glasgow from herbaceous plant. By John Lindley, Ph. D., F. R. S. &c. 1820 to 1841, and the director of Royal Botanical Gardens at &c. Assistant Secretary. Kew from 1841 until his death in 1865. Hooker was also the founder of a number of journals, such as Exotic Flora (3 vols, Read Nov. 4th, 1835. 1822-1827), The Journal of Botany (a.k.a, The London Journal From the Californian seeds most lately received by of Botany, 20 vols, 1830-1857), The Companion to the the Society from Mr. Douglas, has been raised an Botanical Magazine (2 vols, 18355-36), Icones plantarum (10 apparently hardy herbaceous plant, the beauty of which vols, 1837-1854), and Species filicum (5 vols, 1846-1864), and is so remarkable as to have induced the Council to direct was the editor of Curtis’s Botanical Magazine from 1827 to his a figure of it to be prepared for publication in the Trans- death in 1865. Hooker’s many other botanical texts include actions. Victoria Regia (1851), Genera filicum (1842), Flora Boreali This is a species of Mimulus, to which the name of Americana (1840), and with G. A. W. Arnott, The Botany of cardinalis was added by its lamented discoverer [Doug- Captain Beechey’s Voyage (1841). las died in Hawaii in July of the previous year], in consequence of the brilliant scarlet of its blossoms. Its stems are from one and a half to two feet high, erect, loosely branched, and covered with long delicate hairs. The leaves, which are of a pale yellowish green, are also hairy, of an obovate figure, with regular toothings, and connate at their base, which is their narrowest part. The flowers grow singly in the axils of the leaves, which are shorter than the hairy peduncles. The calyx is strongly ribbed, obliquely five-toothed, soft and hairy. The corolla is internally of the brightest scarlet, but of a pale reddish yellow on the outside; its border is divided into four rather convex lobes, all of which are oblong and notched at the end, and the lowermost is the widest. Along the base of each segment passes a short, deep, reddish brown line, which loses itself in the tube. Cultivated in the open ground, this plant flowered abundantly from July to the end of September. It ap- peared to prefer a moist rich soil, and did not suffer at all from the ardent sun to which it was exposed at the foot of a south wall. It produced seeds in some quantity, and George Bentham (1800-1884). Botany students worldwide stuck so readily from cuttings, that there is little doubt of soon become familiar with Bentham’s name (the abbreviation in its becoming a common ornament of the gardens. Benth.), for it is attached, in one way or another, to an immense The accompanying plate has been prepared from a number of plant species. Although Bentham had no formal drawing by Miss Drake, and exhibits as near an education in botany, he had the capacity to become totally approach to the brilliancy of the original as the power of concentrated on any subject that drew his attention, and the water colors will produce. inheritance that he received from his father, Sir Samual Bentham, along with that of and his uncle, the philosopher Over the next several years Mimulus cardinalis Jeremy Bentham, allowed him devote most of his life to the was frequently noted in European botanical and study of plants. Bentham was the secretary of the Horticultural horticultural journals, and a number of these fea- Society of London from 1829 to 1840, and was the president of tured full page chromolithographic plates of the the Linnean Society of London from 1861 to 1874. In 1854 he donated his herbarium of more than 100,000 specimens to the species. At that time there was an obsession among Royal Botanical Garden at Kew, and in the following year, European gardeners in ornamental plants that had yielding to the persuasion of Sir William Jackson Hooker and been recently introduced from other parts of the John Lindley, he joined the staff at Kew, where he continued his world, and particularly so in England, where a large botanical research for the rest of his life. His numerous number of highly illustrated periodicals arose to botanical texts include Labiatarum genera et species (1836), meet the demand for depictions and information Plantas hartwegianas (1839-1857), The Botany of the Voyage of H. M. S. Sulfur (1844), Handbook of the British Flora (1858), about such plants. Such journals include Curtis’s Flora Hongkongensis (1861), Flora Australiensis (7 vols., 1863- Botanical Magazine, Edward’s Botanical Register, 1878), and, with Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, Genera Plantarum Paxton’s Magazine of Botany and Register of (1883; Hooker was the son of William Jackson Hooker. and one Flowering Plants, The British Flower Garden, Lod- of primary collaborators with Charles Darwin in the theory of diges Botanical Cabinet, The Botanist, The Flori- evolution).