Erica formosa Thunb.

Erect shrub up to 60 cm (2 ft) or so. Branches erect or spreading, hispid or pubescent, somewhat slender. Leaves 2-3 mm long, the younger suberect, the older spreading or squarrose, elliptical or oblong, obtuse, thick, sulcate, glabrous, glossy, the younger minutely ciliate. Flowers 3-nate; peduncles 4 mm long, slender, pubescent; bracts approximate, sepal-like but smaller. Sepals about 2 mm long, spreading or reflexed, ovate or broad-lanceolate, acute, leathery, coloured, subviscid, glabrous. Corolla 4 mm long, globose-urceolate, suddenly contracted at the throat, with 8 longitudinal channels, viscid, glabrous, white; lobes about 1/8 the length of the tube, spreading or recurved. Filaments bent round the ovary and again contracted round the stigma; anthers included, 0.7 mm long, lateral, oblong, smooth ciliate at the base, appendiculate; pore nearly as long as the cell; awns broad-linear, densely ciliate, partly decurrent along the connective which stands out at a wide angle from the cells, with long free spreading points, the whole about 2/3 the length of the cell. Ovary densely hirsute; style included, much thickened towards the truncate apex; stigma subsimple.