Phlox ovata (wideflower phlox)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Phlox ovata, photographed by Elias — fig. a Elias, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-05-30 / obs. 132635445

Phlox ovata, photographed by Ken Kneidel — fig. b Ken Kneidel, CC0 1.0 / obs. 83798436

Phlox ovata, photographed by Becky Dill — fig. c Becky Dill, CC0 1.0 / obs. 198187114

Phlox ovata, photographed by Hill Craddock — fig. d Hill Craddock, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195910276

Phlox ovata, photographed by Daniel McClosky — fig. e Daniel McClosky, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 77884693

Phlox ovata, photographed by Brandon Wheeler — fig. f Brandon Wheeler, CC0 1.0 / obs. 21770437

Phlox ovata, photographed by Stephan Eselgroth — fig. g Stephan Eselgroth, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 196103773

Phlox ovata, photographed by kirk gardner — fig. h kirk gardner, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200357380

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 12 botanical countries

Native distribution of Phlox ovata, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Alabama	ALA	NORTHERN AMERICA
Georgia	GEO
Indiana	INI
Maryland	MRY
Massachusetts	MAS
North Carolina	NCA
Ohio	OHI
Pennsylvania	PEN
South Carolina	SCA
Tennessee	TEN
Virginia	VRG
West Virginia	WVA

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 137 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-7.4 °C	-3.4 °C	-0.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	21.1 °C	26.8 °C	31.1 °C
Annual rainfall	924 mm	1,377 mm	2,134 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	175 mm	307 mm	438 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 137 research-grade observations of Phlox ovata that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 7 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Armeria ovata (L.) Kuntze
Phlox carolina var. ovata (L.) Benth.
Phlox latifolia Michx.
Phlox montana Raf.
Phlox ovata var. elatior A.Gray
Phlox ovata var. latifolia (Michx.) Wherry
Phlox triflora Sweet

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol PHLA13. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.