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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Example Sentences

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

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 Project Gutenberg

Still another member of this heath family, to which the Mountain Laurel and Rhododendron belong, is the Little Shin Leaf, with its Lily-of-the-Valley-like flowers.

From Project Gutenberg

Many flowering and fruit-bearing shrubs of the heath family add to the beauty of the mountainous districts, rhododendron and kalmia often forming impenetrable thickets.

From Project Gutenberg

The heath family, all the way from clethra which begins it to cranberry which ends it, dwells in beauty and diversity all about in the Plymouth woods, making them fragrant the year round.

From Project Gutenberg