Erica rivularis L.E.Davidson

Erect shrub up to 600 mm tall. Stems dark grey to black, branches leafy towards the apex, covered with scars from the leaf cushions below, branchlets brown, covered with simple to plumose white hairs. Leaves ternate, erect to spreading, imbricate, 5-6 x 1 mm, linear, subtrigonous, acute, sulcate, margins of the young leaves fringed with short stout plumose white hairs, older leaves with or without short white marginal protuberances; petiole yellowish, 1 mm long with short white hairs. Flowers borne singly in the axils of foliar bracts, crowded at the ends of the branchlets into terminal inflorescences. Pedicel slightly cernuous, 3 mm long with simple to subplumose white hairs; bracteoles 2, median, 2.8-3 mm long, lanceolate, red at the base, shading to white, tinged green along the sulcate apex, margins with short white hairs. Calyx 4-partite, white, turning greenish at the apex with age; sepals 3.8 x 1.2 mm, subfoliaceous, tapering to the apex, just reaching sinuses between lobes of corolla, margins fringed with short simple to subplumose white hairs. Corolla 4-lobed, 4.5 x 3 mm, narrowly cyathiform, white but soon turning brown; lobes erect to spreading, obtuse, with a prominent nerve running down the centre of each lobe to the base of the tube, making the corolla appear angular. Stamens 8, included; anthers 1 mm long, attached dorsally near the base, appendiculate, crest very narrow, slightly serrate or incised, pore half the length of the cell. Gynoecium: stigma capitellate; style included becoming exserted with age; ovary 4-celled, 1 mm long with small basal nectaries.