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 Patterson, family description, key to genera, except as noted
Scientific Editor: Robert Patterson, Thomas J. Rosatti.

Habit: Annual, perennial herb. Stem: decumbent to erect, 10--100 cm, glandular-hairy, hairy, or glabrous. Leaf: pinnate-compound, alternate; basal petiole base membranous or not, sheathing or not; cauline sessile above; leaflets entire to divided, glabrous to glandular-hairy. Inflorescence: cyme or head. Flower: calyx bell-shaped, membranous in age but not separated into membrane and lobes, glandular-hairy; corolla rotate to funnel- or bell-shaped, tube << throat, lobes white to blue or purple; stamens attached at 1 level, filaments hairy at base; ovary generally +- 1 mm, +- 1 mm wide. Fruit: ovoid to spheric. Seed: <= 10, generally 1--3 mm, elliptic to ovate, +- gelatinous when wet, brown to black.
Species In Genus: +- 30 species: America, Eurasia. Etymology: (Greek: perhaps from Polemon, Athenian philosopher, or polemos, strife or war) Note: Perennial herb generally cross-pollinated, annual self-pollinated. Polemonium eddyense newly described; Polemonium pulcherrimum var. shastense newly recognized.
eFlora Treatment Author: Rebecca L. Stubbs, Ruth E. Timme & Dieter H. Wilken