A genus of flowering shrubs in the wax myrtle family, also called sweet fern, native to North America.
Named scientifically in honor of Henry Compton, Bishop of London (1632-1713), who was an amateur botanist. The Latin genus name preserves his surname with the suffix '-ia.'
Bishop Henry Compton had a famous garden and patronized plant collectors, so the Linnaean taxonomists honored him by naming a whole plant genus after him—botanical immortality for a 17th-century clergyman.
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