''Erythranthe moschata'' is a species of

monkeyflower Monkey flower can refer to: *Several genera of plant family Phrymaceae, including: ** ''Diplacus'' ** ''Erythranthe'' ** ''Mimulus'' *Various snapdragon-like Lamiales, including: ** ''Linaria vulgaris'' ** ''Phyllocarpus septentrionalis ''Barne ...

known by the common names muskflower, musk monkeyflower, and formerly as the common musk, eyebright and musk plant. It was formerly known as ''Mimulus moschatus''.

Distribution and habitat

It is native to western North America from

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

to the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...

, where it grows in moist meadows and stream banks. It also occurs in eastern North America where it may be native or introduced. It is known from

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

and parts of Europe, including

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

, where it grows wild after having escaped cultivation.Hear.org Reports
/ref>

Description

This is a rhizomatous perennial herb which is hairless to hairy, sometimes slimy in texture, and generally musky in scent. It is variable in appearance. The prostrate or upright stem grows up to 30 centimeters long. The oppositely arranged leaves are mostly oval in shape and may reach 6 centimeters long. The tubular flower is yellow in color, its tube just a few millimeters wide and widening at the lobed mouth. It may be up to 2.6 centimeters long.

Loss of scent

''Erythranthe moschata'' was widely grown and sold commercially in

Victorian Victorian or Victorians may refer to: 19th century * Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign ** Victorian architecture ** Victorian house ** Victorian decorative arts ** Victorian fashion ** Victorian literature ...

times for its fragrance, and is well known for the story that all cultivated and known wild specimens simultaneously lost their previous strong musk scent around the year 1913.See correspondence in ''The Gardeners' Chronicle'' vols. 75: 78 (1924), 88: 259, 349, 399, 457, 520 ( 1930), and 89: 17, 36, 116, 190, 202, 207 (1931) Writing in 1934 in the journal ''Nature'', E. Hardy described a

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...

nurseryman, Thomas Wilkinson, who in 1898 found that his plants developed a "rank, leafy smell"; five years later, after leaving the trade, he noticed that plants then on sale were scentless.Hardy, "Lost Fragrance of Musk", ''Nature'', v 134 (1934), 3383, 327 While it was sometimes claimed that strongly scented plants could still be found in the wild, Arthur William Hill, in a 1930 article in The Gardeners' Chronicle, presented evidence from British Columbia claiming that wild populations had also lost their scent. A variety of suggestions were put forward for a solution to the mystery, such as that the scent of the original cultivated form had been a rare recessive feature, which later disappeared as a result of uncontrolled pollination or the introduction of other genes from the wild population. Other explanations were given based on changes in climate, that humans had lost the ability to detect the smell, that the scent had been produced by a parasite, or that the loss of scent was a myth. W.B. Gourlay (1947) suggested that the phenomenon could be explained if the highly scented cultivated form had been reproduced vegetatively from a single aberrant plant, first raised in England from the original batch of seed, and later replaced by unscented plants grown from other sources of seed.Gourlay, W. B. "The lost scent of Mimulus moschatus". J R. Hort. Soc. 72, 285-287 David Douglas first described the species and in 1826 near

Fort Vancouver Fort Vancouver was a 19th century fur trading post that was the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company's Columbia Department, located in the Pacific Northwest. Named for Captain George Vancouver, the fort was located on the northern bank of the ...

collected seed from which the first examples in England were raised; it is notable that he made no reference to a strong musk scent in his field notes.''Gardening Illustrated'', v.65, (1948), 6 Moreover, there are references as early as 1917 to plants in the wild having a wide range of characteristics between scentless and strongly scented, with the latter being "very much the exception".See ''Journal of Botany, British and Foreign'', v.55 (1917), 260-261 During the 1920s and 1930s, at the height of botanists' interest in the 'lost scent' phenomenon, there were several reports of strongly-scented ''moschatus'' specimens being discovered in the wild, such as in 1931 on

Texada Island Texada Island is a large island located in the Strait of Georgia of British Columbia, Canada. With an area of , it is the largest island of the Gulf Islands and the third largest island in the Strait of Georgia after Whidbey Island in Washington a ...

, British Columbia.

References

External links

Jepson Manual TreatmentUSDA Plants ProfilePhoto gallery
{{Taxonbar, from=Q17746394, from2=Q6862417 moschata Flora of the Western United States Flora of California Flora of the West Coast of the United States Flora of British Columbia Flora of the Cascade Range Flora of the Rocky Mountains Flora of the Sierra Nevada (United States) Natural history of the California chaparral and woodlands Natural history of the Transverse Ranges Flora without expected TNC conservation status