Erica ventricosa Thunb.

Erect shrub up to 90 cm (3 ft). Branches stout and rigid, the youngest puberulous, glabrescent. Leaves 4-nate, 12-16 mm long, linear-subulate, acuminate, mucronate, suleate, spreading to widely-spreading and incurved, crowded, glabrous, ciliate with long, soft hairs. Flowers in dense, many-flowered umbels; peduncles 4-8 mm long, pubescent; bracts small, remote, linear, cileate. Sepals 6 mm long, linear-lanceolate from an ovate, scarious base, acuminate, with a suleate, foliaceous keel, glabrous, ciliate. Corolla 12-16 mm long, ovoid-urceolate, attenuate upwards and constricted at the throat, glabrous, dry, shiny, hard in texture, white, rosy or red; lobes 3 mm long, stellately spreading, acute, sometimes mealy. Anthers included, 0.7 mm long, lateral, cuneate-oblong, appendiculate; pore about 1/2 the length of the cell; crests small, not reaching to the base of the cell. Ovary turbinate, stipitate, glabrous; style included; stigma subsimple.