Erica retorta L.F.

Erect shrub up to 45 cm (1 1/2 ft.) or so, subglabrous. Branches many, straggling. Leaves 4-nate, about 4 mm long, mostly revolute or squarrose-recurved, crowded, ovate-lanceolate or oblong, acute, tipped with a long bristle, ciliate, thick and rigid. Flowers in umbels of 4-8 flowers; peduncles about 6 mm long but very variable, up to 2 cm in some cases, glandular-viscid; bracts 4 mm long, remote, oblanceolate, acute with a terminal bristle of their own length, scarious, softly pubescent. Sepals 4-5 mm long, lanceolate, otherwise like the bracts but more foliaceous. Corolla very variable in length from about 8-25 mm long, ampullaceous, attenuate above, but variable and the neck sometimes almost absent, throat contracted, viscid, rather transparent, pale rosy or white with darker throat and lobes; lobes 2-4 mm long, ovate, acute. Filaments slender, only slightly widened towards the anther; anthers included, 1-1.8 mm long, lateral, subcrescent-shaped, acute, bilobed, and slightly prognathous at the base, more or less irregularly woolly wdth short, white hairs, pallid, muticous. Ovary elongate on a shortish stipe of nearly its own diameter; style included; stigma capitate.