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heath family

American  

noun

  1. the plant family Ericaceae, characterized by evergreen or deciduous shrubs, trees, and woody plants growing in acid soil and having simple leaves, often showy flowers either solitary or in clusters, and fruit in the form of a berry or capsule, and including the azalea, blueberry, cranberry, heather, madrone, mountain laurel, rhododendron, and trailing arbutus.


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The gardens are home to an important collection of plants in the heath family, including native and nonnative rhododendrons and azaleas, along with blueberries, mountain laurel and others, some of which are rare.

From Washington Post Mar. 10, 2022

This volatile oil is obtained from the winter-green, an American shrub of the heath family, by distillation.

From The Art of Perfumery And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants by Piesse, George William Septimus

Bear′-ber′ry, a trailing plant of the heath family, a species of the Arbutus; Bear′bine, a species of convolvulus, closely allied to the bindweed; Bear′-gar′den, an enclosure where bears are kept; a rude, turbulent assembly.—adj.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 1 of 4: A-D) by Various

Andromeda, an-drom′e-da, n. a genus of shrubs of the heath family: the name of a northern constellation.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 1 of 4: A-D) by Various

The heath family, of about sixty-seven genera, distributed over the temperate and tropical countries of the earth, has twenty-one genera in the United States, seven of which have tree representatives.

From Trees Worth Knowing by Rogers, Julia Ellen

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