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Vascular Plants of California
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Polemonium


Higher Taxonomy
Family: PolemoniaceaeView DescriptionDichotomous Key

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.
Polemonium
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.
Jepson eFlora Author: Rebecca L. Stubbs, Ruth E. Timme & Dieter H. Wilken
Reference: Pritchett 1993 M.S. Thesis, San Francisco State Univ; Stubbs & Patterson 2013 Madroño 60:243--248
Unabridged Reference: Grant 1989 Bot Gaz 150:158--169; Pritchett & Patterson 1998 Madroño 45:200--209
Index of California Plant Names (ICPN; linked via the Jepson Online Interchange)
Key to Polemonium

Previous taxon: Phlox stansburyi var. brevifolia
Next taxon: Polemonium californicum


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Citation for this treatment: Rebecca L. Stubbs, Ruth E. Timme & Dieter H. Wilken 2014, Polemonium, in Jepson Flora Project (eds.) Jepson eFlora, Revision 2, https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/eflora_display.php?tid=8876, accessed on February 06, 2025.

Citation for the whole project: Jepson Flora Project (eds.) 2025, Jepson eFlora, https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/, accessed on February 06, 2025.