Curious Yellow Monkeyflower

Mimulus 'Curious Georgie Boy'

Mimulus ‘Curious Georgie Boy’ on 20% ET0 in September 2011. Photo: SK Reid.

Summary

This plant began with great promise with dark green leaves and attractive golden yellow blooms beginning in May, but quickly showed a fickleness that was difficult to understand. Though the plants on the highest water level seemed to outpace the other treatments initially, when summer hit, they went from 3 plants in July to 1 plant in August that died by September. Until the 80% treatment suddenly died, its quality ratings were fairly good; it seems to have grown and bloomed itself to death on the high water level. From one week to the next, plants would have entire branches die back; from one month to the next, whole plants would just die, with no obvious cause. If the mortality numbers in Table 11 are combined with common growing recommendations for the Mimulus cultivars with California native parentage, it becomes obvious that this plant does not tolerate much irrigation at all, especially in heavy soil. Because of the progressive mortality rates, serious statistical analysis of the growth indexes was problematic late in the season when irrigation differences would be most telling.

Abundant flowering over a long period was the best feature of this plant. It was not self-cleaning, though, and might need some deadheading to reduce the unattractive persistent dead blooms.

Growth and Quality Data

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