noun
definition
An evergreen shrub or small tree of the genus Myrtus, native to southern Europe and north Africa.
Examples of myrtles in a Sentence
There were oaks, beeches (scarcely distinguishable from existing species), birches, planes and willows (one closely related to the living Salix candida), laurels, represented by Sassafras and Cinnamomum, magnolias and tulip trees (Liriodendron), myrtles, Liquidambar, Diospyros and ivy.
Thus in the Mediterranean region the large groups of palms, figs, myrtles and laurels are each only represented by single surviving species.
In Malaya and eastward the forests are rich in arborescent figs, laurels, myrtles, nutmegs, oaks and bamboos.
In Brazil the myrtles are represented by monkey-pots (Lecythideae).
Nearly related to myrtles are Melastomaceae which, poorly represented in the Old World, have attained here so prodigious a development in genera and species, that Ball looks upon it as the seat of origin of the family.
In the northern temperate zone we find forests of a single species, others of three or four species; in this great tropical forest the habit of growth is solitary and an acre of ground will contain hundreds of species - palms, myrtles, acacias, mimosas, cecropias, euphorbias, malvaceas, laurels, cedrellas, bignonias, bombaceas, apocyneas, malpigias, lecythises, swartzias, &c. The vegetation of the lower river-margins, which are periodically flooded, differs in some particulars from that of the higher ground, and the same variation is to be found between the forests of the upper and lower Amazon, and between the Amazon and its principal tributaries.
The most common families on the eastern slopes, where the precipitation is heavy, are the magnolias, crotons, mimosas, acacias, myrtles, oaks, plane-trees and bamboos.
It is divided by the river into East Looe and West Looe; and is sheltered so completely by the surrounding hills that myrtles, geraniums, fuchsias and other delicate plants flourish at all seasons in the open air.
The park (Alameda de la Alhambra), which in spring is overgrown with wild-flowers and grass, was planted by the Moors with roses, oranges and myrtles; its most characteristic feature, however, is the dense wood of English elms brought hither in 1812 by the duke of Wellington.
Elms, limes and poplars are common north of the Tagus, ilexes, araucarias, myrtles, magnolias and a great variety of conifers in all parts.
In the countries bordering the Mediterranean are groves of oranges and olive trees, evergreen oaks, cork trees and pines, intermixed with cypresses, myrtles, arbutus and fragrant tree-heaths.
These hills are densely clothed to their summits with an exuberant growth of olives, figs, myrtles, laurels, oranges, aloes, vines and other sub-tropical plants.
Other deposits of this age in France have furnished plants of a more varied aspect, including myrtles, araucarias, a bamboo and several fanleaved palms. Saporta points out the presence in these Paleocene deposits of certain types common, on the one hand, to the American Tertiary strata between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains, and on the other, to the Tertiary flora of Greenland.
Magnolias and crepe myrtles mark a slow passion in their flowerings, in their heft toward the sky above.
The present entrance to the Palacio Arabe, or Casa Real (Moorish palace), is by a small door from which a corridor conducts to the Patio de los Arrayanes (Court of the Myrtles), also called the Patio de la Alberca (Court of the Blessing or Court of the Pond), from the Moorish birka, " pond," or berka, " blessing."
St. Francisville is the home of The Myrtles, sometimes referred to as "America's Most Haunted House."