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 • Mar. 10, 2022

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

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 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Slice 3 "Apollodorus" to "Aral" by Various

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

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 Old Plymouth Trails by Packard, Winthrop