(_c_) _Gamopetalæ_--The earlier families among those generally having united petals seem not yet quite sure of their new character, for a few of them hark back to the condition of having, in some genera, quite separate petals. One of the first families in this series, the Ericaceæ (Figure 98), or heath family, has several genera in which this is true, notably in the Labrador tea and the sand myrtle among native plants, and some foreign relatives. The Ericaceæ are almost exclusively shrubs or trees, but some of our native sorts, such as trailing arbutus and wintergreen, are practically herblike, although they are, strictly speaking, woody plants. The family is remarkable for containing beautiful flowered garden plants, such as the hundreds of species of South African heaths, the heather, the azaleas and rhododendrons, and our beautiful native Rhodora, about which Emerson wrote one of his most beautiful poems. The flowers in the heath family are often perfectly regular and bell-shaped, but sometimes irregular, as in azaleas and several other genera. Nearly all the family rely on microscopic organisms to get their food, and some close relatives, like the Indian pipe, are saprophytes. There are over 70 genera and 1,200 species widely distributed. Central Asia is the home of most rhododendrons and azaleas, scores of species being found in the upper reaches of the Himalayas. The Ericaceæ are typical of many families in the first group of the gamopetalæ, in that all of them, with a few exceptions like the cranberry, have a superior ovary. That is, the petals and sepals arise from the base or below the ovary, and consequently the mature fruit in such plants is never crowned with the remains of the withered calyx, as blueberries always are and all other gamopetalæ that have an inferior ovary. The character of having an inferior or superior ovary separates the gamopetalæ into two large groups of families, the heath family and many others, with superior ovary, and a few but numerically very important families that always have an inferior ovary. [Illustration: FIG 98.--SWAMP AZALEA A shrub of the _Ericaceæ_, with white or pink sticky flowers and dry capsular fruits.] Taking first the families that all have a superior ovary, we must, for lack of space, exclude most of them from here. A few of the most important, or typical, after the Ericaceæ, are: