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: Annual. Stem: decumbent to erect, glabrous, hairy, glandular, or tufted-woolly-hairy. Leaf: simple, 1--3-pinnate-lobed or -dissected, generally alternate, margins entire, toothed, or lobed, tips acute, acuminate, or mucronate; basal generally in rosette; cauline generally reduced. Inflorescence: flowers 1--many in bract axils. Flower: calyx membranous between lobes, membranes splitting or expanding in fruit; corolla > calyx, lobes generally ovate, acute or acuminate. Fruit: spheric to ovoid; chambers 3; valves separating from top, to base and detaching or not to base and staying attached to receptacle. Seed: 3--many, yellow to brown, gelatinous when wet.
Etymology: (Filippo L. Gilii, Italian naturalist, 1756--1821) Note: Stamens, styles said to be exserted protrude beyond fused part of corolla, that is, beyond corolla throat. Other taxa in TJM (1993) moved to Aliciella, Lathrocasis, Linanthus, Navarretia, Saltugilia.
Unabridged Note: Gilia can be challenging to identify. Several small-flowered species are only cryptically different from one another and many traits overlap. In order to successfully use the key, it is important to note pattern and distribution of flower color at the time of collection, as it may fade upon drying. Depauperate specimens may be particularly difficult if not impossible to identify using ordinary means. Descriptions of flowers follows previous authors (Day 1993; Grant & Grant 1956) in subdividing fused part of corolla into tube (basal part with parallel sides) and throat (flared part distal to tube). It is important to note that in some cases these definitions do not refer to homologous parts of the corolla.
eFlora Treatment Author: J. Mark Porter