Herbs annual or perennial, rarely subshrubs or vines. Leaves alternate or opposite, sessile to petiolate, simple, pinnatifid to palmately lobed, or compound. Inflorescences determinate, corymbose, paniculate, or capitate, or flowers solitary. Flowers (4- or)5-merous. Calyx gamosepalous, cylindric to campanulate; tube herbaceous throughout and papery in fruit or with herbaceous midveins separated by translucent membranes distended or ruptured in fruit; lobes often scarious margined. Corolla gamopetalous, actinomorphic or zygomorphic, rotate to funnelform or salverform; lobes overlapping in bud. Stamens inserted at same or different levels on corolla at base, alternate with corolla lobes, exserted to included; filaments equal to unequal, filiform. Ovary superior, (2- or)3-locular, placentation axile; ovules 1 to many per locule. Style 1; stigma lobes (2 or)3. Fruit a capsule. Seeds globose, ovoid, or fusiform, sometimes winged, often sticky when wet.

Nineteen genera and 320-350 species: North and South America, a few species native to temperate Asia and Europe; one genus, Polemonium, and three species in China. Cobraea scandens Cavanilles (a perennial vine with violet campanulate corollas ca. 5 cm) and three species of Phlox, P. drummondii Hooker, P. paniculata Linnaeus, and P. subulata Linnaeus (herbs with white to red, salverform corollas and unequally inserted stamens), are cultivated in China.

Fang Rhui-cheng & Huang Shu-hua in Wu Cheng-yih, ed. 1979. Polemoniaceae. Fl. Reipubl. Popularis Sin. 64(1): 155-160.

(Authors: Fang Rhui-cheng; Dieter H. Wilken)