phlox, common name for plants of the genus
Phlox and for members of the Polemoniaceae, a family of herbs (and some shrubs and vines) found chiefly in the W United States. The family includes many popular wild and garden flowers, especially the genera
Phlox, Polemonium (called Jacob's ladder), and
Gilia, a plant common in desert and mountain areas. Although most phloxes are perennial, the common garden phloxes are annual hybrids of the Texas species
Phlox drummondii. The moss pink (
Phlox subulata) is a creeping evergreen plant native to the E United States and often cultivated in rock gardens. A few species of phlox and polemonium are found in E Asia. The phlox family is classified in the division
Magnoliophyta Magnoliophyta , division of the plant kingdom consisting of those organisms commonly called the flowering plants, or angiosperms. The angiosperms have leaves, stems, and roots, and vascular, or conducting, tissue (xylem and phloem).
..... Click the link for more information. , class Magnoliopsida, order Polemoniales.
phlox
Moss pink (Phlox subulata)
(credit: Russ Kinne—Photo Researchers/EB Inc.)
Any of about 65 species of plants (genus Phlox), belonging to the family Polemoniaceae, admired both in gardens and in the wilds for their clustered heads of flowers. All species but one are native to North America. Phlox is herbaceous, usually with oval or linear leaves; it has heads of massed tubular flowers with five flaring lobes. A few species are woody, but most are herbaceous annuals or perennials. Sizes range from the 5-ft-high (1.5-m) summer phlox (P. paniculata) to the 18-in.-high (45-cm) woodland
perennial blue phlox (P. divaricata) to the low-creeping, freely branching, evergreen moss pink, or creeping phlox (P. subulata).
phlox any polemoniaceous plant of the chiefly North American genus Phlox: cultivated for their clusters of white, red, or purple flowers
Phlox a genus of perennial and, less commonly, annual herbs and sometimes subshrubs of the family Polemoniaceae. The erect or climbing stems are only slightly branching. The entire leaves are lanceolate or narrowly ovate; they are opposite except at the upper part of the stems, where they are alternate. In species with procumbent, highly branched stems that form mats, the leaves are linear or subulate; on sterile shoots the leaves are agglomerate. The flowers are in many-flowered terminal inflorescences known as thyrses; less commonly, they are solitary. The corolla has a narrow tube and a wheel-shaped, saucer-shaped, or stellate five-parted lip. The fruit is a three-valved capsule.
There are about 60 species of phlox, distributed in North America. The USSR has one spreading mountain species— P. sibirica. Many species are ornamental. One of the best-known tall-growing perennial species is P. paniculata, which has an enormous number of varieties that differ in height, shape, and size of the inflorescences and size and coloring of the flowers. The most common spreading species include P. subulata and P. setacea, and the best-known annuals include P. drummondii. In floriculture, hybrids developed with other species of Phlox are also used.
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