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, bristly, generally soft; hairs simple. Stem: erect. Leaf: generally 0 below, alternate, simple, 1--4 cm, linear to oblanceolate, entire to toothed; teeth acute to pointed or bristle-tipped. Inflorescence: bracts leaf-like; pedicels glandular. Flower: calyx lobes equal, pointed to bristle-tipped; corolla bilateral, 2-lipped, white to deep pink, upper lip generally 3-lobed, lower 2-lobed; stamens attached at or below sinuses, unequal, generally curved, included to exserted, pollen yellow; style generally exserted. Fruit: 2--5 mm, ovoid, 3-lobed in ×-section; outer wall of valve rounded or indented between walls separating chambers. Seed: gelatinous when wet. Chromosomes: 2n=14.
Etymology: (Latin: like Loeselia) Note: Self-compatible; self- to cross-pollinated.
eFlora Treatment Author: Dieter H. Wilken & Steven L. Timbrook
Reference: Timbrook 1986 Madroño 33:157--174