THE JACOB’S LADDER FAMILY 
[ORDER LI. POLEMONIACE.®] 
T HE Jacob’s Ladder Family is a small one, possessing showy flowers, and spread over northern 
Asia and America and the west of S. America, but unknown in the tropics. 
Several genera are cultivated in gardens and greenhouses — Phlox, Gilia, Cobaea, Collomia, and 
Ipomopsis. None possess any medicinal properties. 
JACOB’S LADDER. (POLEMONIUM. Linn )— Flowers showy, blue, purple, or white, in 
terminal clusters. Calyx of 5 sepals, united into a tube and separating into 5 lobes, bell-shaped, 
free from and inserted below the seedcase (inferior) ; corolla of 5 petals, united into a short tube 
and spreading into a broad 5-lobed limb (rotate), inserted below the seedcase (hypogynous) ; 
stamens 5, the filaments hairy and so dilated at the base as nearly to close the corolla-tube, all 
lying on one side of the flower, inserted in the throat of the corolla-tube (epi-petalous) ; carpels 3, 
with a single style crowned with a 3-lobed stigma ; fruit a many-seeded, 3-celled capsule, opening 
by 3 valves. Herbs with leaves divided to the midrib into separate leaflets (pinnate). 
Jacob’s Ladder, Greek Valerian. (Polemonium cceruleum. Linn.)— As just 
described. An erect plant with a handsome terminal cluster of numerous bright blue or white 
flowers, f-i inch across; the stem is 1-2 or even 3 feet high, erect, hollow, and angular; and 
the leaves are divided or very deeply lobed to the midrib into numerous oblong leaflets with 
one terminal one (imparipinnate) ; those from the root form dense tufts and have long leaves 
divided into many leaflets, while those on the stem are smaller and have fewer leaflets. The root 
is creeping. ' [Plate 14. 
This plant is a common favourite in gardens. Under cultivation the flowers are often mottled and 
the foliage blotched with white. 
Very rare. In bushy hilly places, chiefly in the north ; probably native in Staffordshire, Derby- 
shire, Yorkshire, and Westmorland, introduced into the other counties where it occurs both in 
England and Scotland; probably native in Ireland. June — July. Perennial. 
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