pyxie: creeping evergreen shrub having narrow overlapping leaves and early white star-shaped flowers; of the pine barrens of New Jersey and the Carolinas
shrub: a low woody perennial plant usually having several major stems
rickettsia: any of a group of very small rod-shaped bacteria that live in biting arthropods (as ticks and mites) and cause disease in vertebrate hosts; they cause typhus and other febrile diseases in human beings