: an azalea (Rhododendron canadense) of northeastern North America that has spring-flowering pink blossoms
Example Sentences
Recent Examples on the WebBotany cannot go farther than tell me the names of the shrubs which grow there,—the high-blueberry, panicled andromeda, lambkill, azalea, and rhodora,—all standing in the quaking sphagnum. Henry David Thoreau, The Atlantic, 6 Oct. 2017
Word History
Etymology
borrowed from New Latin, genus name used by linnaeus (Species plantarum, 1763, p. 561) for the plant now called Rhodendron canadensis, going back to Latin, an erroneous reading (as an accusative rhodoram) of rodarum in the text of Pliny (Naturalis historia 24.172), a name allegedly used by the Gauls for a plant of uncertain identity