8 August 2016.
After two days searching I found Mimulus today. Along a salmon stream a few plants poked their fruity and flowery heads through the grass. A couple of people were mesmerized by seeing the salmon swim upstream to find a place to lay their eggs, but I was too excited to find monkeyflowers here. The National Park ranger (Bonnie) looked at me amused and happy to have helped to find the plant.
There were only a few plants, but they were enough for spurring me into keep looking. About 20 miles from Valdez I found more plants and up the road a few more. Success!
As I was pulling out from one of the sampling sites I noticed a tire had gone completely flat. I changed the tire on the side of the road and found a metal hook deep into the broken tire. A few hours later I had driven back to Valdez and repaired the tire. I collected a few more populations at increasing elevation. These plants are different to the other ones we have seen in the trip. There is a most interesting phenotype here that I have not seen anywhere else. I’ll have to look more carefully at these plants when I get back to Scotland.
