Polemoniaceae (po-le-moh-nee-AY-see-ee)
Iconic Features
- Often small annuals
- Tubular flowers with flat faces
- Usually with 3-lobed stigmas
Description (Jepson)
- Eudicotyledons (eudicots) – a major lineage of flowering plants including most plants traditionally described as dicots and generally characterized by
- 2 seed leaves (dicotyledon)
- Netted (reticulate) leaf venation
- Flower parts in fours and fives
- Pollen grains with 3 pores (tricolpate)
- Vascular bundles in stem arranged in a ring
- Taproot system
- Annual or perennial herbs, vines, and small shrubs
- Most California phloxes are small annuals
- Leaves
- Simple (not divided into leaflets) or compound (divided into leaflets)
- Alternate (1 leaf at each junction with stem) or opposite (2 leaves at each junction with stem)
- Usually narrow
- Flowers
- Inflorescence (flower arrangement) in many forms
- Bisexual, radially or bilaterally symmetric tube-shaped flowers with flat, dish-like faces (salverform)
- Flower parts generally in fives
- 5 partially-fused sepals (usually green, outer flower parts), often connected by a translucent membrane
- 5 petals, usually fused, twisted in bud
- 5 stamens (male flower parts)
- Single pistil (female flower part) with a 3-lobed stigma (pollen-receiving structure)
- Ovary superior (above the attachment of other flower parts)
- Fruit a generally 3-chambered capsule (a dry, multi-chambered fruit that splits open at maturity)
Notes
- Approximately 314 species in the Northern Hemisphere and South America
- Greatest diversity of species in western North America, particularly California
- Includes skunkweeds, leptosiphons, phloxes, and gilias
- Many cultivated as ornamentals
- All 78 wild-growing species documented by CalFlora in the Bay Area are native
- Seeds in the genus Collomia swell and are gelatinous when wet
- Scientific name from the included genus Polemonium, possibly from the Greek polemonion referring to plants associated with the Greek herbalist Polemon of Cappadocia
- Common name from the Greek phlox, “flame,” an old name for the genus Lychnis (campions or catchflies) in the Pink family (Caryophyllaceae)
- Represented by 12 species at Edgewood
Browse Some Edgewood Plants in this Family
