Myrica is a genus of about 35–50 species of small trees and shrubs in the family Myricaceae, order Fagales. The genus has a wide distribution, including Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America, and missing only from Australia. Some botanists split the genus into two genera on the basis of the catkin and fruit structure, restricting Myrica to a few species, and treating the others in Morella.

Myrica pensylvanica, the northern bayberry, is a species of Myrica native to eastern North America, from Newfoundland west to Ontario and Ohio, and south to North Carolina. It is also classified as Morella pensylvanica. Myrica pensylvanica is a deciduous shrub growing to 4.5 m tall. The leaves are 2.57 cm long and 1.5-2.7 cm broad, broadest near the leaf apex, serrate, and sticky with a spicy scent when crushed. The flowers are borne in catkins 318 mm long, in range of colours from green to red. The fruit is a wrinkled berry 35.5 mm diameter, with a pale blue-purple waxy coating; they are an important food for yellow-rumped warblers. This species has root nodules containing nitrogen-fixing microorganisms, allowing it to grow in relatively poor soils. The berries can be used to make bayberry wax candles. American colonists boiled the berries to extract the sweet-smelling wax, which they used to make clean-burning candles.