Erica spumosa L.

Erect shrub up to 45 cm (1 1/2 ft) or so. Branches rather slender, spreading, pubescent. Leaves 3-nate, 2-3 mm long, erect-spreading, more rarely erect and adpressed, somewhat lax, rarely crowded, linear to narrow elliptical, trigonous, sulcate, thick, the floral sometimes wider, coloured, sepaloid, glabrous. Flowers in subglobose, 3-flowered heads; peduncles 0.5 mm long, glabrous; bracts approximate, 3-4 mm long, broad-ovate, convex, keeled and keel-tipped, scarious, glabrous, coloured. Sepals like the bracts but obovate and from 1/2 to nearly as long as the corolla. Corolla 3-5 mm long, narrow-ovoid or suburceolate, dry, glabrous, white; lobes 2/3-7/8 the length of the tube, suberect, lanceolate, acute. Anthers exserted, about 2 mm long, subterminal, broad-linear, subobtuse, deeply bipartite, black, appendiculate; pore less than 1/2 the length of the cell; awns decurrent for a short distance, then free, about 1/3 the length of the cell. Ovary oblong-turbinate, glabrous; style exserted; stigma simple.