Common Name: HEATH FAMILY
Habit: Perennial herb, shrub, tree. Stem: bark often peeling distinctively. Leaf: simple or 0, generally cauline, alternate, opposite (whorled), evergreen or deciduous, often leathery, petioled or not; stipules 0. Inflorescence: raceme, panicle, cyme, or flowers 1, terminal or axillary, generally bracted; pedicel often with 2 bractlets. Flower: generally bisexual, generally radial, bell-shaped, cylindric, or urn-shaped; sepals generally (0)4--5, generally free; petals generally (0)4--5, free or fused; stamens (2--5)8--10, free, filaments rarely appendaged, anthers dehiscing by pores or slits, awns 0 or 2(4), seemingly abaxial, reduced or elongate, generally curved; nectary generally present at ovary base, generally disk-like; ovary superior or inferior, chambers generally 1--5, placentas axile or parietal, ovules 1--many per chamber, style 1, stigma head- to funnel-like or lobed. Fruit: capsule, drupe, berry. Seed: generally many, winged or not.
Genera In Family: +- 100 genera, 3000 species: generally worldwide except deserts; some cultivated, especially Arbutus, Arctostaphylos, Rhododendron, Vaccinium. Note: Monophyletic only if Empetraceae included, as treated here. Ledum included in Rhododendron. Non-green plants obtain nutrition from green plants through fungal intermediates.
eFlora Treatment Author: Gary D. Wallace, except as noted
Scientific Editor: Gary D. Wallace, Thomas J. Rosatti, Bruce G. Baldwin.

Habit: Shrub, glabrous or short- or long-hairy, glandular or not, often smelling of wintergreen, generally rhizomed. Stem: prostrate to erect, rooting at nodes or not. Leaf: alternate, evergreen, leathery, entire to serrate. Inflorescence: raceme, each flower with 1 bract, 2 bractlets, or flowers 1 in leaf axils, each with 4--10 bractlets; pedicel jointed to flower. Flower: sepals generally 5, fused; petals 5, fused, cylindric, urn-, or bell-shaped, white to red; stamens (5,8)10, anthers dehiscing by 2 short, slit-like to rounded pores, awns (0,2)4, sometimes reduced; ovary superior or 1/2-inferior, chambers (4)5, placentas axile, at top. Fruit: capsule, loculicidal or irregularly dehiscing, generally +- enclosed by fleshy, colorful calyx (or a berry and/or with non-fleshy calyx). Seed: few to many per chamber, appendages 0.
Etymology: (J.F. Gaulthier, botanist, physician, Quebec, 1708--1756)
eFlora Treatment Author: Walter S. Judd
Reference: Middleton 1991 Bot J Linn Soc 106:229--258