The American Botanist 



VOL. XVII JOLIET. ILL., NOVEMBER. 1911 No. 4 



Summer on winter, day or night, 



f^he ufoocts are ever a neiv clelignt; 



*Jhei/ give us peace and they make us strong, 

 Svch wonderful balm, to them belong. 



oo living or dying, U' II take mine ease. 

 Lender the trees, LCnder the trees. 



— R. H. Stoddard. 



THE SMOOTH OR MEADOW PHLOX. 



By Willard N. Clute. 



THE Phlox genus is a typical g-enus of the North Temperate 

 Zone, but the American species are by no means evenly 

 distributed nor do they all have the same general habitat. In 

 the west there are several species that keep pretty close to the 

 Rocky Mountain region, and in the east are others that are 

 found only in the more elevated parts, while in the territory 

 between are still others that come to their best development in 

 the lowlands and on the prairies and become infrequent as the 

 foot-hills on either border are reached. 



The phloxes are practically absent from New York and New 

 England but Florida possesses half a dozen or more species. 

 In fact the region about the Gulf seems to be the center from 

 which the various prairie species have spread northward. The 

 migrations of the phloxes, however, do not appear to have been 

 everywhere alike. The species that delight in warmth and 

 sunlight have found the mountains north of the Gulf States to 

 be a rather trying barrier between them and the prairies of 

 Illinois and Indiana, but they have managed to go around 

 them on the west by means of the Mississippi valley, while 



