Erica afra white flower, creamy buds

Thin fleshy beige cylinders of Erica afra pedicels emerge from many leaf axils on the available branchlets, delivering abundant blooms. The longish, wide-backed, corolla “urns” are covered in soft pale hairs on their white surfaces. At their tips, four short corolla lobes are obtusely pointed or rounded, here fairly wavy.

The anthers are visible depending on the camera angle, included in the tubes but not too deeply. The flowers nod. Gravity poses a problem to nodding flowers, dealt with in various ways by flower shape. In an E. afra flower the nectar droplet produced is small, retained in the base of the corolla tube narrowed near the nectary (Manning and Helme, 2024; Manning, 2007; iNaturalist).