PRAIRIE PHLOX 



Phlox pilosa L. 



May 



Prairie roadsides 



Orange puccoon is in bloom and the. magenta-pink 



flowers of prairie phlox blossom brightly along the 



railroad right-of-way. If the two casually gi'ow close 



to each other, the clashing of bright pigments may offend the sensitive 



eye; one shudders and turns away. 



But somehow in all the world of gi-een in which wild flowers are 

 found, color clashes seldom occur; therq is almost always enough of the 

 mediating green to set each color apart where, in itself, it is pleasant 

 to look at. 



Prairie phlox is a member of that prairie clan growing in the heavy 

 black sod of the original prairie still remaining along certain highways 

 and railroads. In this tight black soil, matted with generations of roots, 

 the tap roots of the phlox penetrate and the ])lants grow. In May they 

 send up a tuft of stems covered A\-ith masses of narrow-petaled, bright 

 pink flowers, some lavender-pink, some white with a purple-red eye. The 

 stems are thin and densely fine-hairy; the leaves, as in all phloxes, are 

 opposite and stemless, narrow and stilf. The tight buds are furled in the 

 manner of an umbrella, and unroll to lay out tbe five blunt petals around 

 a darker center ending in a tul)e. 



Prairie phlox is brilliant there along the highway. The orange puc- 

 coon is far enough away not to offend with its nearness. The redwinged 

 blackbird on the Avire above expands itself in song. The dickcissek are 

 back, endlessly chanting from fence posts or old prairie dock stalks, and 

 soon among the grasses, when the phlox is out of bloom, the dickcissels 

 will build a nest. By that time spring and the wild phlox will be past. It 

 will be June again, high summer on the prairie. 



77 



