Erica pectinifolia

Erica pectinifolia is an erect shrub in the Dasyanthes section of the Erica genus. Attempted common names like Cape snow heath and cockscomb heath may take root. The plant reaches 1,5 m in height. The branches are slender and hairy, the base multistemmed, allowing it to resprout after fire.

The small, mostly narrow leaves grow spaced in whorls of four up the stems. The leaf-shape varies from ovate to lanceolate and linear. The blades are open-backed, coarsely but thinly bristle-haired. The leaf margins are sparsely yet conspicuously fringed with pale, cartilaginous hairs in a pectinate way, meaning resembling the teeth of a comb, suggesting the cockscomb common name.

The species distribution is in the east of the Western Cape from Uniondale to the west of the Eastern Cape around Willowmore, through the Baviaanskloof and coastally near Humansdorp, as far as Kariega (Uitenhage). The photo was taken in the Baviaanskloof.

The habitat is lower fynbos and scrub slopes. Neither of the two varieties of the species is considered threatened in habitat early in the twenty first century (Bond and Goldblatt, 1984; Baker and Oliver, 1967; iNaturalist; https://www.worldfloraonline.org; http://redlist.sanbi.org).