NOTEWORTHY COLLECTIONS
Rediscovery of Mimulus alatus in Michigan
Scott Namestnik
Significance of the Report. Prior to this collection, Mimulus alatus was considered extirpated from Michigan and had not been collected in the state since 1916. Previous Knowledge. Mimulus alatus Aiton (Phrymaceae) (Figure 1), the winged monkey-flower, wing-stemmed monkey-flower, or sharpwing monkeyflower, is a perennial herb of low ground, occurring primarily in swamps and wet woods and on shady streambanks (Fernald 1950; Gleason and Cronquist 1991); it is also known from wet open places (Penskar and Crispin 2004). A common plant farther south (Swink andWilhelm 1994; Voss and Reznicek 2012), M. alatus reaches the northern extent of its native range in Iowa, Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, and Ontario (Kartesz 2015; USDA, NRCS 2016). In Michigan, the most recent herbarium records of M. alatus are from Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne counties in the southeastern corner of the state (Voss and Reznicek 2012), but Voss (1996) questioned the origin of the records from Oakland and Wayne counties, noting that the collections from all three counties were made on the same day in 1916 by different collectors who nevertheless often botanized together. He suspected that all three collectors were together when the plant was collected in Macomb County (the collection with the most precise locality data on the label) and that the other two collectors labelled their collections later when they were uncertain of their provenance. In addition, a First Survey collection of M. alatus by John Wright and George Bull from Berrien County in 1838 was recently discovered (A. Reznicek pers. comm. August 12, 2015; Reznicek et al. 2011).
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