Zenobia D. Don

Zenobia consists of a single extant species of shrub from the southeastern United States; it is described under the entry for Zenobia pulverulenta. It is related to Andromeda, with which it was at first included, being the only other genus within the Andromedeae, a tribe placed within Ericaceae Subfamily Vaccinioideae (Mabberley 2017) – there is a clear resemblance to the familiar genera Gaultheria and Vaccinium within that subfamily. Bean (1981) noted that ‘David Don, in splitting the genus [Andromeda], gave most of the segregate genera names that, like Andromeda, were drawn from Greek mythology. But Zenobia commemorates an historic personage – the self-styled Queen of Palmyra, who led a massive revolt in the eastern provinces of Rome in the third century AD.’

In addition to Z. pulverulenta the genus is known as fossil fruits from the middle Miocene strata of Jutland, Denmark, and have been named †Zenobia fasterholtensis (Friis 1985).