286 POLEMONIACEAE. 



Family 88. POLEMONIACEAE. Phlox Family. 



Herbs or rarely low shrubs, with alternate or opposite, 

 entire, lobed or dissected leaves, and perfect regular or 

 nearly so flowers, corymbose-capitate, cymose or panicu- 

 late. Calyx tubular or campanulate, 5-cleft, the seg- 

 ments slightly imbricated. Corolla 5-parted, the lobes 

 contorted. Stamens 5, inserted on the tip of the corolla 

 and alternate with its lobes; filaments slender; anthers 

 versatile, 2-celled, longitudinally dehiscent. Ovary su- 

 perior, mostly 3-celled; ovules few-many in each cell; 

 style simple, filiform; stigmas 3, linear. Capsule mostly 

 loculicidally 3-valved. Seeds various. 



Leaves alternate; annual herbs, or 1 species 

 perennial and lignescent at base. 

 Calyx scarious between the angles, ruptured 



by the distended capsule. 3. Gilia. 



Calyx scarious or coriaceous at base. 2, Navarretia, 



Leaves alternate, palmately lobed; shrubby. 4. Leptodactylon. 

 Leaves opposite and — 



Entire, the floral alternate. 1. Microsteris. 



Palmately lobed, upper verticillate. 5. Linanthus. 



1. MICROSTERIS Greene. 



Small much branched annuals with entire leaves, all 

 except floral ones opposite, and minute flowers scattered 

 singly or in pairs in the axils of the alternate leaves. 

 Calyx tubular, 5-cleft, the lobes acute, scarious-margined. 

 Corolla salver-shaped, the tube narrow. Stamens 

 straight, short, unequally inserted on the corolla-tube. 

 Capsule 3-celled, at length distending and rupturing the 

 calyx-tube. Seeds few, large, the coat when moistened 

 developing a thick glutinous mass. 



I. M. calif ornica Greene. Slender, 1-2 dm. high, loosely and 

 somewhat dichotomously branched from the middle; leaves from 

 obovate-subulate in the lowest to oblong and oblong-lanceolate, 

 1-2 cm. long, all more or less pubescent with scattered hairs, a few 

 fine gland-tipped hairs on the flowering branches and calyx; calyx- 

 teeth slightly shorter than the tube; corolla red, the lobes emarginate, 

 little surpassing the calyx; capsule ovoid. (Collomia gracilis of 

 recent authors, not of Douglas.) 



Occasional in shady places in the foothills. 



Collomia grandiflora Dougl. A strict erect annual, with entire 



