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Erica arborea, the tree heath or tree heather, is a species of flowering plant (angiosperms) in the heather family Ericaceae, native to the Mediterranean Basin and Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa. It is also cultivated as an Ornamental plant.
The wood, known as briar root (French language: bruyère, Catalan language: bruc, Portuguese: betouro, Spanish language: brezo), is extremely hard and heat-resistant, and is used for making smoking pipes. Leaf fossils attributed to this species were described for the Mio-Pleistocene deposit of São Jorge in Madeira Island.
In Macaronesia, it occurs in thermophilous forests, dominating dry and shallow soils, southern aspects, and forest margins.Désamoré, A., Laenen, B., Devos, N., Popp, M., González-Mancebo, J. M., Carine, M. A., Vanderpoorten, A. (2011). Out of Africa: north-westwards Pleistocene expansions of the heather Erica arborea . Journal of Biogeography, 38(1), 164-176. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2010.02387.x
Throughout the Mediterranean Basin, its distribution is not continuous, extending from the Atlantic coasts of Portugal and Spain to the coast of the Black Sea in Turkey and Georgia. The heather occurs within the Mediterranean maquis shrublands in semi-arid habitats but can also be found in forest undergrowth up to 1400 m a.s.l. in fresher and more humid environments. It prefers acidic or acidified soils derived from siliceous substrates.Reille, M., Gamisans, J., Andrieu-Ponel, V., De Beaulieu, J. L. (1999). The Holocene at Lac de Creno, Corsica, France: a key site for the whole island. New Phytologist, 141(2), 291-307. DOI: 10.1046/j.1469-8137.1999.00343.x
It is also present in an isolated population in the Tibesti Mountains (Chad) in the Sahara, where it occurs at the top of upper montane desert steppe vegetation between 2500 and 3000 m a.s.l.Dinies, M., Schimmel, L., Hoelzmann, P., Kröpelin, S., Darius, F., Neef, R. (2021). Holocene high-altitude vegetation dynamics on Emi Koussi, Tibesti mountains (Chad, central Sahara). In: Runge, J., Gosling, WD, Lézine, A.-M., Scott, L., (Eds). Quaternary Vegetation Dynamics — The African Pollen Database, 1st ed. CRC Press, 27-50. DOI: 10.1201/9781003162766
In eastern Africa is normally referred to as giant heather. It occurs in the Ethiopian highlands, in the highest mountains along the East African Rift System, from southern Uganda to northern Malawi. It is also present in the Sarawat Mountains in the southwestern Arabian Peninsula, including Yemen and Saudi Arabia. In Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, the heather is a constituent of the tropical alpine vegetation, dominating the shrubland above the treeline in mountain areas between 3000 and 4000 m a.s.l.
Naturalised populations occur in south-eastern Australia and New Zealand, where tree heath is seen as a potential environmental weed.*Noble, M. R. (2016). The weed potential of Erica species for Tasmania and other areas of southern Australia. 20th Australasian Weeds Conference, 11-15 September 2016, Perth, Western Australia.
Other tall growing heaths, including the Portugal Heath ( Erica lusitanica) and channel heath ( Erica canaliculata) may also sometimes be called tree heath.
The wood is also used for making jewellery, fountain pens and knife handles.
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