From these it has escaped so freely in many sections of
the North and East as to be counted among the local wildflowers.
Unless the young offshoots are separated from the parent and
given a nook of their own, the flower quickly reverts to the
original type. European cultivators claim that the most brilliant
colors are obtained by crossing annual with perennial phloxes.
WILD SWEET WILLIAM (P. maculata), another perennial much sought
by cultivators, loves the moisture of low woods and the
neighborhood of streams in the Middle and Western States when it
is free to choose its habitat; but it, too, has so freely escaped
from gardens farther north into dry and dusty roadsides, that
anyone who has passed the ruins of Hawthorne's little red cottage
at Lenox, for example, and seen the way his wife's clump of white
phlox under his study window has spread to cover an acre of
hillside, would suppose it to be luxuriating in its favorite
locality. This variety of the species (var. Candida) lacks the
purplish flecks on stem and lower leaves responsible for the
specific name of the type.
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