Erica versicolor flowers of many ages

Erica versicolor flowers grow in small stem-tip clusters, here on dark-coloured pedicels.

The broad-based sepals are triangular, adhering to the corolla base and coloured dull-red in their central parts. The isosceles sepal triangles have small upper angles, the sepals acutely tipped. Leaf-like bracts emerge with the sepals at the perianth base, smaller, greenish yellow and veering up from the flower body. Sepal colour becomes bleached to nearly white with flower age, while the corolla withers to brown.

The nearly straight or sometimes straight corolla tubes are long and club-shaped, widest near their tips where the green of buds gradually make way for pale creamy yellow in mature flowers. Only the withered flowers show exserted styles in the photo.

Once the new stem-tip leaves mature into deeper green, they spread wider in their neat vertical arrays while still curving in like micro-bananas (Manning, 2007; iNaturalist).