Douglas Justice's December blog, at December 2023 in the Garden - UBC Botanical Garden, with good photos there, continues the theme of broad-leaved evergreens, this month the rhododendron family. I'm a big fan of rhododendron leaves, particularly ones with indumentum, so I was pleased to get to photograph this Rhododendron rex. I thought Rhododendron wiltonii was new to me, but I see I posted it in 2016 with lighter spring indumentum and flowers. I posted Rhododendron cinnabarinum subsp. xanthocodon Concatenans Group last month, but it's in this month's blog, and there are still flowers, which again distracted me from remembering to try to smell the leaves. Maybe it's that I can't get close enough to them. There are a lot more genera in this family. I didn't know Arctostaphylos columbiana, hairy manzanita, at all, but I didn't have any trouble finding or recognizing it. @vitog has commented in Pacific Northwest Native Plants on more locations than are mentioned in the blog. This is Arctostaphylos manzanita. Are these usually good-looking plants, or is this one especially beautiful?
I thought if Douglas used the term "rhododendron family", I could too. That term seems to be in the lingo, but just according to DuckDuckGo. Google shows lots of hits, but even though I used quotes in the search, the first hits up do use the term "heath family". Douglas didn't include any heathers in the write-up.
Manzanitas aren't rhododendrons either. So, your account does include heaths other than rhododendrons. Even if his did not. Ericaceae - Wikipedia
Manzanitas are in the same family as Rhododendrons (Ericaceae); so, it makes sense to discuss them together, regardless of what you call the family.
I did see one more Arctostaphylos along the way, one not mentioned in the blog - Arctostaphylos insularis, a California native. The blog featured four broad-leaved Ericaceae evergreens. I thought I didn't photograph any of the Gaultheria, but now I've decided that this really is salal, Gaultheria shallon, what I thought it was at the time, but not what I was looking for in this location a few steps inside the entrance to the BC Rainforest Garden. The other genus featured was Vaccinium. Here is Vaccinium moupinense. Here is the"superb" Acer Griseum acting as a landmark for the V. moupinense growing beneath it. And not mentioned in the blog, but very noticeable, is Vaccinium cylindraceum, in the African section of the Alpine Garden. That's all I have from the blog. But speaking of noticeable, this should be Berberis thunbergii. Just to include another flower, here is Helichrysum trilineatum, in the South African section of the Alpine Garden. In the Asian Garnden, I was supposed to be looking for purple leaf backs on a rhododendron when I got distracted by these fruits on the Hydrangea febrifuga.
This is a chapter on Ericaceae. Besides general knowledge of the family, it focuses on the production of reactive oxygen species, antioxidants in plants, and specifically, the anthocyanin pigments that abound in Ericaceae. https://www.alphaomegaplants.com/_files/ugd/31edfb_73f64226465d40119f0342f4c704f832.pdf
