A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
heather
Heather is a low woody evergreen shrub with tiny scale-like leaves and dense spikes of small purple-pink flowers in late summer, covering moor and heath across northern Europe. It grows on the poorest acid ground and forms a continuous carpet, and a hillside in August turns a color that has no good name in English. Bees work it heavily and heather honey sets to a jelly rather than running.
Etymology
The word is Scots and northern English in origin, from an older form that appears in Middle English, and its further source is unsettled. It seems to have been influenced in spelling by heath, which is a different word from a different root.
Notes
Grouse moor management burns heather in patches on a rotation, so that birds have old deep heather for cover and young shoots for food within a short distance. That pattern of small burned rectangles is what gives a Scottish or Pennine moor its patchwork appearance from the air. Heather stems were used for rope, thatch, brooms, and bedding.