Erica carduifolia Salisb.

Erect shrublet up to about 30 cm (1 ft). Branches ascending or spreading, somewhat flexuous, roughly hispid. Leaves 3-nate, 4-8 mm long, spreading, squarrose or recurved, not or scarcely as long as the internodes, linear-oblong, obtuse, convex above, thick, sulcate or open-backed, glabrous, long setose-ciliate, the younger with gland-tipped hairs. Flowers terminal, umbellate or, sometimes by the arrest of lateral branchlets, pseudoracemose; peduncles 8-10 mm long, slender, viscid; bracts small, median, the lowest subbasal. Sepals 3 mm long, linear-lanceolate to subovate, acute, thick, glabrous, viscid, minutely gland-ciliolate. Corolla 6-7 mm long, 4-4.5 mm wide, suburceolate or urceolate-cyathiform, scarcely narrowed at the throat, glabrous, viscid, red to mauve; lobes erect, obtuse, about 1/4 the length of the tube. Filaments very short scarcely 2 mm long, very broad; anthers included, about 1 mm long, dorsifixed above the base on a prolongation of the connective bent downwards at 45° with the cells, oblong, appendiculate; pore 2/3 the length of the cell; awns partially decurrent on the filament, then spreading, the whole about equal to or shorter than the cells. Ovary broadly turbinate; glabrous; style included; stigma subsimple or clavate, small.