General description:- Dwarf shrubs to small trees.
Leaves:- Simple, exstipulate, usually evergreen.
Flowers:- Actinomorphic (rarely slightly zygomorphic), in racemes or umbels, or solitary or in clusters in the leaf-axils. Petals usually united (connate). Stamens twice as many as petals (rarely fewer), inserted on the receptacle or disc, but sometimes connected (adnate) to the extreme base of the corolla and falling with it; anthers usually opening by pores; pollen grains usually in tetrads. Ovary superior (rarely inferior); placentation axile; style single.
Fruit:- A capsule, berry or drupe.
ARBUTUS
General description:- Evergreen shrubs or trees.
Leaves:- Alternate, petiolate.
Flowers:- 5-merous, in terminal, bracteate panicles; bracteoles absent. Sepals united (connate) at the base. Corolla urn-shaped (urceolate), with short, rolled downward (revolute) lobes, deciduous. Stamens 10, filaments covered with long, shaggy hairs (villous); anthers with awl-shaped (subulate), apical appendages.
Fruit:- A globose berry.
Key features:-
1) Inflorescence glabrous or slightly puberulent.
2) Anther-appendages simple.
3) Tree or erect shrub.
4) Fruit with little excrescences or bumps (verrucose) or grooved or furrowed (sulcate).
ERICA
General description:- Dwarf to medium-sized evergreen shrubs.
Leaves:- Whorled, often linear, or apparently linear on account of revolute margins; petiole short, appressed.
Flowers:- 4-(5)-merous, in terminal umbels or racemes, or in axillary clusters or umbels more or less aggregated into terminal or intercalary panicles; pedicel with 2 or more bracteoles. Sepals free, green or pinkish, shorter than the corolla. Corolla cylindrical, campanulate or urceolate, with lobes shorter than or equalling the tube, persistent in fruit. Stamens 8(-10), inserted between the lobes of a nectariferous disc; anthers with or without appendages.
Fruit:- A loculicidal capsule.
Key features:-
1) Calyx smaller than corolla.
2) Leaves whorled, usually ± patent.
3) Sepals free.
4) Bracteoles present.