Common Name: PHLOX FAMILY
Habit: Annual, perennial herb, shrub, vine. Leaf: simple or compound, cauline (or most basal), alternate or opposite; stipules 0. Inflorescence: cymes, heads, clusters, or flower 1; bracts in involucres or not. Flower: sepals generally 5, fused at base, translucent membrane generally connecting lobes, torn by fruit; corolla generally 5-lobed, radial or bilateral, salverform to bell-shaped, throat often well defined; stamens generally 5, epipetalous, attached at >= 1 level, filaments of >= 1 length, pollen white, yellow, blue, or red; ovary superior, chambers generally 3, style 1, stigmas generally 3. Fruit: capsule. Seed: 1--many, when wetted swelling or not, gelatinous or not.
Genera In Family: 26 genera, 314 species: America, northern Europe, northern Asia; some cultivated (Cantua, Cobaea (cup-and-saucer vine), Collomia, Gilia, Ipomopsis, Linanthus, Phlox). Note: Leptodactylon moved to Linanthus.
eFlora Treatment Author: Robert W. Patterson, family description, key to genera, except as noted
Scientific Editor: Robert W. Patterson, Thomas J. Rosatti.

Habit: Perennial herb or +- subshrub, open to matted or cushion-like. Stem: prostrate or decumbent to erect. Leaf: cauline, opposite, simple, sessile, lance-linear to elliptic, entire. Flower: corolla salverform; stamens attached at > 1 level, some unequal.
Etymology: (Greek: flame, ancient name for Lychnis of Caryophyllaceae) Note: Phlox gracilis moved to Microsteris.
eFlora Treatment Author: Carolyn J. Ferguson, Suzanne C. Strakosh & Robert Patterson
Reference: Locklear 2009 J Bot Res Inst Texas 3:645--658
Unabridged Reference: Cronquist 1984 Intermountain Flora 4:95--107