Observation of the Month: Red Sticky Monkeyflower (Diplacus puniceus) Phrymaceae

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15086042

This observation of the month reflects the current confusing state of identification of observations from our area in the family Phrymaceae which follows iNaturalist's adoption of "Plants of the World Online" as the new taxonomic reference for vascular plants. Under the new scheme, any plant observation previously identified as Mimulus aurantiacus on iNat now bears the label Diplacus aurantiacus through an automatic "taxon swap." But Diplacus aurantiacus occurs in Central and Northern California. You won't find it on the Checklist of Vascular Plants of San Diego County (5th Edition, 2014) ("SD Checklist"). For the plant in this observation, the proper identification is Diplacus puniceus which is found on the SD Checklist and is also in the new iNat taxonomy. This observation could have been identifed under the old scheme as the taxon Mimulus aurantiacus var. puniceus and would then have been automatically "swapped" to the "new" taxon Diplacus puniceus. Since it was not part of the automatic swap, the identification had to be updated manually. There will be lots of observations like this, especially from coastal and foothill habitats of San Diego County. But some observations from our area of plants which were previously identified as Mimulus aurantiacus will properly belong to one of the other taxa in the genus Diplacus (D. aridus, D. longiflorus, or D. x australis) making it challenging to properly identify all observations in this category. In many cases, the most appropriate identification will be simply the genus Diplacus. Here is a brief summary with maps of distribution of the species of Diplacus found in San Diego County which may have been identified previously on iNat as Mimulus aurantiacus. The SD Checklist along with a wealth of information about plants in San Diego County can be found at http://www.sdplantatlas.org/. Also available online is the more recently published Annotated Checklist of the Vascular Plants of Baja California, Mexico at http://bajaflora.org/ which may have even more current taxomony and literature for many plants that also occur in San Diego County.

Posted on 05 de setembro de 2018, 04:16 PM by milliebasden