Erica orthiocola E.G.H.Oliv.

Compact rounded woody shrub ±300(-400) x 300 mm, single-stemmed reseeder. Branches: numerous main and secondary with continuous apical growth; internodes short, less than leaf length, no infrafoliar ridges, puberulous with simple spreading to reflexed white hairs. Leaves 3-nate, erect to spreading, imbricate, ±5.5 x 1.5 mm, oblong-elliptic, adaxially flattened, abaxially rounded, hard and stiff, glabrous, margins with short stubby plumose hairs, apex shortly cuspidate, sulcus narrow and closed at base; petiole 1 mm long, appressed, adaxially glabrous, abaxially puberulous. Inflorescence: flowers 2(1) terminal on highly reduced lateral branchlets, appearing axillary on main branches, these branchlets with only 2 bract-like prophylls; pedicel 6 mm long, with very short dense substellate hairs, white to pinkish: bract about 1/5 up pedicel, 1.5 x 0.5 mm, oblong, very slightly apiculate, white-pink, semitransparent, glabrous, sparsely ciliolate, sulcus very small to absent; bracteoles 2, 2/3 up pedicel, otherwise like bract. Calyx 4-lobed, 2.5 x 2.0 mm. appressed to corolla; lobes slightly fused at base and to apex of pedicel, ovate, apiculate, the outer two slightly overlapping inner two, stout and hard, scarious with semitransparent marginal zone, pink and green, glabrous, margins with short stout plumose hairs and finer simple hairs, sulcus narrow. ±1/3 length of lobe. Corolla 4-lobed. 4 x 3.5 mm, shortly and broadly funnel-shaped, pink turning brownish, glabrous; lobes erect, 1.5-2.0 x 1.5 mm, ovate, subacute, keeled with a dark longitudinal stripe, margins occasionally toothed to slightly erose. Stamens 8, free, manifest; filaments 2 x 0.4 mm, linear-oblong, slightly narrowed at base, straight, glabrous, whitish; anthers dorsifixed near base, bilobed. V-shaped, muticous; thecae 1.5 x 0.5 mm. oblong with narrowed slightly elongated tip papillate, medium brown; pore relatively large. 2/3 length of theca; pollen in tetrads. Ovary 4-locular, ±1 x 1 mm. broadly ellipsoid to obovoid, slightly emarginate, glabrous, dull pink, with no basal nectaries; ovules 6-10 per locule pendulous from placenta in upper style tar exserted, 6 mm long, filiform, glabrous, white to reddish at apex; stigma small narrowly cyathiform, red. Fruit a dehiscent capsule, 2 x 2 mm, valves splitting for 2/3 their length to angle of 30°, apices not incurved, septa equal on valves and columella. Seeds 0.7 x 0.5 mm. ellipsoid, yellow to dark brown, testa reticulate, with thick radial cell walls, internally slightly wavy, externally ± straight.