Kelso Creek Monkeyflower
Mimulus shevocki
Color: Yellow and maroon
Common name: Kelso Creek Monkeyflower
Latin name: Mimulus shevocki
Family: SCROPHULARIACEAE
Height: 3/4-8.5 inches
Description: Mimulus shevockii is an minutely hairy annual herb with a very slender, often red stem. The tubular base of the flower is encapsulated in a red or red-spotted calyx of sepals. The flower has a narrow tube throat and wide face, and is roughly a centimeter long. The corolla is divided into a deep maroon red upper lip and a wider lower lip which is yellow with red dots.
Leaf: The oppositely arranged oval leaves are no more than a centimeter long each and are sometimes fused together in pairs about the stem.
Range: w edge Mojave Desert (Kelso Creek), s Sierra Nevada Foothills (Cortez, Cyrus canyons, Kern Co.),
Habitat: Alluvial fans, dry streamlets, generally granitic soils
Elevation: 900–1300 m.
Flowering time: Apr–May
Notes: Mimulus shevockii is endemic to the southern Sierra Nevada in Kern County, California, where it is known from about 10 occurrences near Lake Isabella. It grows in granitic, alluvial soils in dry washes and Joshua tree woodlands where the Sierra Nevada transitions to the Mojave Desert. The plant sometimes hybridizes with its relative, Mimulus androsaceus. Mimulus shevockii is threatened by residential development, agricultural conversion, grazing, road maintenance, and vehicles and is included in the CNPS Inventory of Rare and Endangered Plants on list 1B.2 — rare, threatened, or endangered.
We have an online wildflower field guide that is designed to help you identify desert wildflowers by color, scientific name, region and common name. The pictures are sized to work on the iPod, iPhone, iPad and similar devices. With your iPod or phone you will easily be able to identify wildflowers while in the desert. Links for downloads are on the bottom of the Wildflower Field Guide page.
Photo tips: Most digital point-and-shoot cameras have a macro function - usually symbolized by the icon of a little flower. When you turn on that function, you allow your camera to get closer to the subject, looking into a flower for example. Or getting up close and personal with a bug. More on desert photography.
Mojave Desert Wildflowers - This book is the standard by which all other wildflower books are measured. The author, Jon Mark Stewart, has combined super photography with concise information. This book has an entire color page for each wildflower covered, with a discussion of the wildflower. 210 pages with 200 color photos. More...
What's Blooming Now - Check the Wildflower Reports
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