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Smooth Phlox
Phlox glaberrima
Smooth phlox blooms in Wildwood mostly in
late May and early June. It is a showy plant with hot pink to
purple flowers that peer out from the greenery under the power lines
along Wildwood Drive. Members of the genus Phlox
typically have leaves in pairs opposite each other on the stems and
blue, pink, or purple flowers with a shape called salverform by
botanists. A salver is a little plate, and salverform flowers
are formed by fusion of the petals (5 in Phlox) to form a
flat dish shape. However, the dish shape narrows very abruptly
to a long narrow tube at the back of the flower. Thus, a Phlox
flower could be described as a five-lobed dish balanced on a thin
tube. You can see the opening into the flower tubes at the
center of each flower in the picture. Smooth phlox is noted
for lacking hairs on its upper stem, hence the name. The
scientific name glaberrima means "very smooth."
The genus Phlox is primarily a North American
genus, with a few members in western Asia. A number of species
in this genus are cultivated; Phlox paniculata or garden
phlox is the most common. The genus is in the Polemoniaceae,
usually called the Phlox family; however, the family name comes from
the genus Polemonium, members of which are commonly known as
sky-pilots or Jacob's-ladders. Polemonium is primarily
a western genus and is not known in Wildwood.
Smooth phlox is a plant of the southern and central
US; it is found from Georgia and northwest Florida to eastern Texas,
north to southeast Virginia, Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin. It
likes moist areas and while it grows on the bluffs along Wildwood
Drive, you will notice that it prefers to live under the trees,
rather than out in the more exposed areas. It probably likes
the seeps that are common in the bluffs of Wildwood.
The genus name Phlox comes
from the Greek word phlox meaning flame, referring to the
color of the flowers of many members of the genus. Smooth
phlox growing amid the other green plants along the bluffs does
resemble little flames shining in the shadows. GGC |
