Mimulus species prefer wet or moist areas and are not drought resistant.

The cultivar 'Highland Red' has received the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

[6] The color patterns of Mimulus flowers are determined by an inverted repeat in the YELLOW UPPER (YUP) genetic locus.

[3][8][9] Removal of Mimulus from family Scrophulariaceae has been supported by studies of chloroplast DNA first published in the mid-1990s.

[10] Multiple studies of chloroplast DNA and two regions of nuclear rDNA[11] suggest that the genera Phryma, Berendtiella, Hemichaena, Leucocarpus, Microcarpeae, Peplidium, Glossostigma, and Elacholoma are all derived from within Mimulus and would need to be rearranged.