Members of this family consist of shrubs and trees. Here in the northeast, they are deciduous but in other places they may be evergreen. Flowers are small and appear to have six petals but are actually tepals, consisting of three sepals and three petals that are indistinguishable from each other. Members in the northeast include spicebush and sassafras. Other members that don’t grow in the northeast include avocados, cinnamon, camphor, and bay laurel. But watch out, our native mountain laurel does not belong to the laurel family but rather to the heather family, Ericaceae.
