Moss Phlox

Here's something that might be showing up in a few weeks; it's a Moss Phlox (aka Creeping Phlox aka Mountain Phlox aka Moss Pink). I got an ID on it recently, inspiring this post. I personally only knew this was a phlox, but the iNaturalist community likes it as the Moss Phlox species.

My book Who Named the Daisy? Who Named the Rose? by Mary Durant says this about the name:
Apart from a variety that grows in Siberia, phlox are an American flower of some seventy different species. The name was an ancient one that Pliny used in reference to a flame-red Campion, or catchfly, so named because phlox means fire in Greek. It comes from the verb phlegein, to burn, which is also the root word for phlegm, believed in ancient medicine to be the cause, rather than the companion, of inflaming fevers and sore throats, etc. Linnaeus took the old name of phlox away from the Red Campion and gave it to the American flowers, some say because the buds furl to a point like little torches or flames, but his reason has never been made clear.
Apparently the Moss Phlox smells somewhat like Cannabis, as this couple had the misfortune to discover. (The plants aren't close relatives though; they're in different families.) As someone with almost no sense of smell, I can't tell you what these flowers smelled like.

April 11, 2022 at Washington Valley Park
Photo 189540288, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)



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