Diplacus aurantiacus
Credits
Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
Recommended citation
'Diplacus aurantiacus' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Synonyms
- Mimulus glutinosus J.C.Wendl.
- Diplacus glutinosus (J.C.Wendl.) Nutt.
- Mimulus aurantiacus Curtis
An evergreen shrub up to 4 or 6 ft high, of bushy habit; young shoots rather downy and very glutinous. Leaves opposite, narrowly oblong or oblanceolate, shortly pointed, tapered at the base to a short stalk, margins recurved and slightly toothed, 2 to 4 in. long, 3⁄8 to 3⁄4 in. wide, dark shining green and glabrous above, pale and slightly downy beneath. Flowers produced singly in the leaf-axils of the growing shoots. Corolla trumpet-shaped, the tube 1 to 11⁄4 in. long, dividing at the mouth into five lobes and there 3⁄4 in. wide; variable in colour but perhaps typically yellow or orange. Calyx tubular, distinctly five-ribbed, nearly as long as the corolla-tube, green, glutinous, with five small, erect, awl-shaped teeth; flower-stalk 1⁄4 to 1⁄2 in. long. Seed-vessel 1⁄2 to 3⁄4 in. long, slender, ribbed.
Native of California; cultivated late in the 18th century and probably introduced by Menzies. It is usually grown in a cool greenhouse, where it is valued for the succession of blossoms borne throughout the summer by the young growing shoots. It does well as a wall plant in the south-west, flowering there in the winter months, and is worth trying in cooler districts on a sunny wall.