Erica patersonii

Erica patersonii, commonly known as the mealie heath, and in Afrikaans as the mielieheide (mealie heath), is a hairless shrublet growing a few stiffly erect branches to heights around 1 m.

The linear to needle-like, incurving leaves grow in whorls on short-shoots, densely tufted and overlapping along the stems, the leaves about 1 cm long.

Baker and Oliver classified the species in a group they called Evanthe, plants bearing mostly tubular flowers over 9 mm long at stem-tips. Manning and Helme have the species in a group called smooth or sticky trumpet heaths, flowering at the tips of short side-shoots, sometimes aggregated into false-spikes.

The species distribution is in the far southwest of the Western Cape, growing in patches of the Cape Peninsula and from Betty’s Bay to Stanford. The photo was taken near the Bot River Lagoon during November.

The habitat is coastal fynbos in marshy flats. The habitat population is deemed endangered early in the twenty first century, due to flower harvesting, habitat loss and invasive vegetation (Manning and Helme, 2024; Baker and Oliver, 1967; iNaturalist; http://redlist.sanbi.org).