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Pink Monkeyflower · Mimulus lewisii


Mumulus lewisii ©Lory Duralia

Description: This summer-blooming monkeyflower sports pink to purple flowers and green, opposite sticky leaves without leafstalks. Flower and foliage are similar to red monkeyflower; it enjoys wet places, mountain meadows and high streamsides in the Pacific Northwest. It blooms from July to September. Pink Monkeyflower will grow 1 to 3 feet tall and will spread outward by rhizomes; it also re-seeds. Part sun/sun, regular water.


Mimulus lewisii ©Ellen Mast

Lewis collected a specimen of pink monkeyflower in August of 1805, from the headwaters of Trail Creek in present-day Montana, where it still grows today. The journals record the experience of straddling the creek: "McNeal had exultingly stood with a foot on each side of this little rivulet and thanked his god that he had lived to bestride the mighty and heretofore deemed endless Missouri"