Erica vestita old flowers dark

Dark, old flower tubes below the bright, stem-tip Erica vestita inflorescence confirm the old adage: It is the happy days full of abundant flowering that fill the heart with exuberance, but the dutiful perseverance in doing the necessary in hard times that keeps the show on the road.

The blackened corollas retain their shape, even holding exserted styles in position for a while in floral afterlife. Successive flushes of flowering in the same season yield the tiered inflorescence. It continues to attract sunbirds to the same bush over a prolonged period. Nectar still provided for pollinating partners as under-cover fruits develop in the leathery calyces lower down, suggests business sense in the everyday miracle contrived without a mind. This is a visible activity timeline of the season’s actions on show, like a formal record.

Below the flowers the thread-like stem foliage is dense. The long, ascending leaves permeate the old, as well as the new inflorescence parts of this species like bracts (Manning and Helme, 2024; Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2015; Manning, 2009; iNaturalist).