Square-stem Monkeyflower

Mimulus ringens

Bird foodPollinator plant

Growing it

When	Flowers July to August; fruits August to September
Type	wildflower
Sun	Full sun, partial shade
Water	Medium, high
Soil	pH 5.5–7.5
Hardiness	zone 3–8
Mature height	0.9 m
Mature spread	0.6 m
Spacing	0.4 m
Years to maturity	2
Bloom	Jul–Aug
Flower colour	Blue Purple read from a published flora
In bloom	July August
Fruit	Aug–Sep
Native to	AB, SK

egg-shaped leaves about 7 cm long in opposite pairs

Where it has been recorded

BothSpecimensObservations

5 squares of about 28 km, each holding at least one record. A square is not a claim that the plant grows throughout it, and an unshaded square is unrecorded rather than empty. Darker squares hold more records, which follows roads and towns as much as it follows the plant. 3 herbarium specimens and 3 field observations this project may redraw. A filled dot is a pressed sheet somebody can re-examine; a hollow ring is a photograph identified by community agreement. Where the dots are dense is where people have looked, not where the plant is commonest, and empty ground is unsurveyed rather than unoccupied. How this map is made.

Which ecoregions the records fall in

Wet Meadow / Marsh wet ground: from the catalogue's regional tag, not from occurrence records
Riparian streamside: from the catalogue's regional tag, not from occurrence records

These are counts of records collected somewhere in the region, which is the resolution of the evidence: the map above shows where inside it. A region with 3 records is not the same claim as one with three hundred, so the count travels with the region. A region missing from this list means nobody has recorded it there, which is not the same as the plant being absent. Records within 900 m of a border count for neither side, because the border is not drawn finely enough to say which one they are on. Boundaries digitised from the National Ecological Framework for Canada v2.2 (Ecological Stratification Working Group 1995), simplified to about 900 m for display: an outline is accurate to roughly a kilometre, not to the metre. How these counts are made.

See every observation, live and current, on GBIF or iNaturalist.

Documented animals

14 documented relationships.

nectar for

A Digger Bee Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Calligrapher Fly Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Eastern Calligrapher Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Hummingbird Clearwing Moth Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Ruby-throated Hummingbird Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Silver-spotted Skipper Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Snowberry Clearwing Specimen records from iNaturalist.org

pollen for

American Bumble Bee Robertson 1929
Bibio albipennis Robertson 1929
Epistrophe emarginata Robertson 1929
Holopyga ventralis Robertson 1929
Physocephala texana Robertson 1929
Sphenometopa tergata Robertson 1929
Triepeolus micropygius Robertson 1929

Also worth knowing

Safety

Toxicity not assessed, absence of a warning is not a guarantee of safety

Edible parts

Leaves

Buying it

About $8–$16 per plant (estimate), usually from a native-plant nursery. Estimate (herb default); AB retail as of 2026

Where these numbers came from

Flower detail: not verified, a genus-level estimate