''Phyllodoce'' (, ) is a small genus of plants in the heather family,

Ericaceae The Ericaceae () are a Family (biology), family of flowering plants, commonly known as the heath or heather family, found most commonly in acidic and infertile growing conditions. The family is large, with about 4,250 known species spread acros ...

. They are known commonly as mountainheaths, mountain heaths, or mountain heathers.''Phyllodoce''.
Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) They are native to North America and Eurasia,''Phyllodoce''.
Flora of North America, Volume 8. where they have a circumboreal distribution.''Phyllodoce''.
The Jepson eFlora. Jepson Herbarium, UC Berkeley.

Description

Plants of this genus are

subshrub A subshrub (Latin ''suffrutex'') or undershrub is either a small shrub (e.g. prostrate shrubs) or a perennial that is largely herbaceous but slightly woody at the base (e.g. garden pink and florist's chrysanthemum). The term is often interch ...

s that occur in arctic-alpine regions. They often grow from

rhizome In botany and dendrology, a rhizome ( ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and Shoot (botany), shoots from its Node (botany), nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from ...

s, the stem bases formed by clumps of old leaf stalks. They have erect or spreading stems, the new shoots covered in glandular hairs, the old ones bare, tough, and shreddy. The leaves are alternately arranged. They have narrow, leathery blades that roll under tightly at the edges. The

inflorescence In botany, an inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a plant's Plant stem, stem that is composed of a main branch or a system of branches. An inflorescence is categorized on the basis of the arrangement of flowers on a mai ...

is a solitary flower or an array of up to 30. The flower has a cup- or bell-shaped corolla of five petals that are fused together for at least half their lengths. There are usually ten

stamen The stamen (: stamina or stamens) is a part consisting of the male reproductive organs of a flower. Collectively, the stamens form the androecium., p. 10 Morphology and terminology A stamen typically consists of a stalk called the filament ...

s, which sometimes protrude from the corolla. The fruit is a capsule containing over 100 tiny seeds.

Species

There are four to seven or eight species in genus ''Phyllodoce''. Even after detailed

phylogenetic analyses In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as Computational phylogenetics, phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organ ...

the relationships between plants in this genus are still unclear.Ikeda, H., Yakubov, V., Barkalov, V., & Setoguchi, H. (2014)
Molecular evidence for ancient relicts of arctic‐alpine plants in East Asia.
''New Phytologist'', 203(3), 980-988. Species include: * '' Phyllodoce aleutica'' – Aleutian mountain heath * '' Phyllodoce breweri'' – purple mountain heath, red mountain heather, Brewer's mountain heath * '' Phyllodoce caerulea'' – blue mountain heath, purple mountain heather * '' Phyllodoce empetriformis'' – pink mountain heath, red mountain heath * '' Phyllodoce glanduliflora'' – yellow mountain heath Hybrids between species also occur. The name ''Phyllodoce'' belongs to one of the sea nymphs of

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2417381 Ericaceae genera Ericoideae