LOGANIA FAMILY 
LOGANIACEAE 
INDIAN PINK 
Spigelia marilandica L. 
The Logania family is largely a family of warm and 
tropical regions. 
The beloved Yellow Jasmine of the 
south is its most famous member. Some violent poisons, 
strychnine for example, are ob- 
tained from the family, but 
apart from the beauty of its 
flowers it is of little note. This 
genus is named for Adrian 
Spiegel, a seventeenth century 
writer on botany, who was possi- 
bly the first to give instructions 
for preparing an herbarium. 
The Indian Pink is found in rich woods 
from Ohio to Missouri and south to Florida 
and Texas. In Illinois it occurs only in the 
south. It is a perennial whose smooth 
4-angled stem grows 1-2 feet high, branch- 
ing or not. The opposite sessile leaves are 
similar to those shown and smooth except 
for a few hairs on the veins underneath. 
The very attractive flowers are pro- 
duced from May to July, usually in a soli- 
tary 1-sided spike at the end of the stem. 
The green calyx is deeply 5-parted. The 
long tubular corolla, 5-lobed at the end, 
is bright red outside and yellow within. 
Five stamens, whose anthers are narrow 
and 2-lobed at the base, are attached to the 
corolla tube. The pistil consists of a short 
2-celled ovary, a long slender style which 
is hairy at the upper end and jointed a little below the middle, 
and a blunt stigma. In fruit the 2 cells of the ovary enlarge to 
produce a sort of twin capsule. 
The corolla tubes are so long that nectar cannot be obtained 
from them by bees or flies; instead, hummingbirds and butter- 
flies visit and pollinate the flowers. 
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