Field Book of Western Wild Flowers

by Margaret Armstrong; J. J. Thornber

Fool's Huckleberry—Menziesia urcelolaria.
Swamp Laurel—Kalmia microphylla.
Woolly Labrador Tea—Ledum Groenlandicum.

There are only a few kinds of Phyllodoce, of arctic and alpine regions; low shrubs, with small, leathery, evergreen leaves; flowers nodding, with bracts, in terminal clusters; calyx usually with five divisions; corolla more or less bell-shaped, usually five-lobed; stamens usually ten; stigma with a round top, or four to six lobes; capsule roundish: often called Heather, but we have no native Heather.

Red Heather
Phyllódoce Bréweri (Bryanthus)
Pink
Summer
Northwest

A charming little shrub, from six to ten inches tall, with gay flowers and dark yellowish-green leaves, standing out stiffly from the stem, like the bristles of a bottle-brush. The flowers are sweet-scented, nearly half an inch across, with reddish calyxes and pedicels and bright pink, saucer-shaped corollas, with from seven to ten, long, purple stamens, a purple pistil and crimson buds. This makes heathery patches on high mountain slopes, up to twelve thousand feet in the Sierra Nevadas.

Red Heather
Phyllódoce empetrifórmis (Bryanthus)
Pink
Summer
Northwest

Much like the last, but the nodding flowers are smaller and not quite so pretty, with bell-shaped corollas and the stamens not protruding. It forms beautiful patches of bright purplish-pink color on mountainsides, up to eleven thousand feet, farther north than the last.

Yellow Heather
Phyllódoce glanduliflòra (Bryanthus)
Yellowish
Summer
Northwest

This makes heather-like patches on rocks and has many rough, woody stems, crowded with yellowish-green leaves, shorter and broader than those of Red Heather. The drooping flowers are about three-eighths of an inch long, with a hairy, greenish-yellow calyx and yellowish corolla, something between cream and pale-lemon in color. At a distance the effect of the flowers is much more yellow than close by, but they are not so pretty as either the red or white heathers.

Red Heather—P. Breweri.
Red Heather—P. empetriformis.
Yellow Heather—Phyllodoce glanduliflora.