Erica cristata Dulfer

Erect shrub up to 60 cm (2 ft) or so. Branches slender, sub-virgate, glabrous. Leaves 3-nate, 4 mm long, adpressed, tips slightly recurved, linear or narrow-elliptical, blunt, about as long as the internodes, sulcate, glabrous, edged with regular hyaline teeth. Flowers in umbels of 2-10 flowers or sometimes more; peduncles 4-6 mm long, gland-hispid; bracts median, small, foliaceous, viscid, gland-ciliate. Sepals 2-3 mm long, linear or linear-spathulate, keeled, foliaceous, glabrous, dark purple. Corolla1-1.2 cm long, elongate-elliptic or tubular-urceolate, mouth contracted, viscid, tubercular-hispid, red or purple-red, the throat dark purple; lobes short sub-erect scarcely stellato-patent, pale. Filaments filiform; anthers included, 0.8 mm, long, lateral, oblong-cuneate, prognathous and bilobed at the base, appendiculate; pore about 1/3 the length of the cell; awns long-decurrent on the filament, with spreading points, about 3/4 the length of the cell. Ovary cylindrical on a long slender stipe, 2-3 times its length, glabrous; style included; stigma capitellate.