Epigaea [SEP] parent taxon
Epigaea
Epigaea is a genus comprising three species of flowering plants in the Ericaceae. The species are small creeping shrubs that are typically anywhere from tall at full growth, forming large patches. The leaves are evergreen, alternate and simple, ranging amongst the three species from long. The flowers are small, white or pink, with a five-lobed tubular corolla which is produced in mid-spring. The fruit is a dry capsule with numerous small seeds.
Extant species.
There are three species:
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Taxon in disguise
In bacteriology, a taxon in disguise is a species, genus or higher unit of biological classification whose evolutionary history reveals has evolved from another unit of similar or lower rank, making the parent unit paraphyletic. This happens when rapid evolution makes a new species appear radically different from the ancestral group, so that it is not (initially) recognised as belonging to the parent phylogenetic group, leaving the latter an evolutionary grade.
While the term is from bacteriology, parallel examples are found throughout the tree of