noun
definition
A rockrose; a plant of the genus Cistus.
Examples of cistus in a Sentence
China has no Cistus or heath, only a single Ferula, while Astragalus is reduced to 35 species.
The sugar-cane flourishes, the cotton-plant ripens to perfection, date-trees are seen in the gardens, the rocks are clothed with the prickly-pear or Indian fig, the enclosures of the fields are formed by aloes and sometimes pomegranates, the liquorice-root grows wild, and the mastic, the myrtle and many varieties of oleander and cistus form the underwood of the natural forests of arbutus and evergreen oak.
The great mass of the vegetation, however, is of the low-growing type (maquis or garrigue of the western Mediterranean), with small and stiff leaves, and frequently thorny and aromatic, as for example the ilex (Quercus coccifera), Smilax, Cistus, Lentiscus, Calycotome, &c. (2) Next comes, from 1600 to 6500 ft., the mountain region, which may also be called the forest region, still exhibiting sparse woods and isolated trees wherever shelter, moisture and the inhabitants have permitted their growth.
At a lower level there are wide tracts of moorland, covered in many cases with sweet-scented cistus and other wild flowers.
It is now completely destitute of trees, but it abounds with brushwood of lentisk and cistus, and here and there affords a patch of corn-land to the occasional sower from Myconus.
Morena, where the ladanum hush (Cistus ladaniferus) is specially abundant; those covered by the Lahiatae are known as tomiliares (from tomillo, thyme), and occur chiefly in the south, south-west and east of the table-land of New Castile.
The large furnaces for the distillation of mercury at Almaden were at one time heated solely with charcoal obtained from the Cistus ladaniferus.
The gum cistus is the commonest plant of the country.