Erica baccans

Erica baccans, commonly known as berry heath, grows large, erect and bushy or willowy, up to 3 m tall and the stems hairless. Baccans is derived from the Latin, meaning berry-like, referring to the flower shape. 

The leaves are small and linear, ascending close to the stems in whorls of four. A whitish line is visible along the centre of the outside leaf surface.

This Erica belongs in a group of species called Trigemma, characterised by a conspicuous calyx, in another classification called cloaked heath. These plants bear their flower parts in threes or fours. The globular to urn-shaped corollas of E. baccans with slightly outward curving shallow lobes nod solitary from axils of upper leaves and on side-shoots. The calyx, the outer cloak of dry, keeled sepals, covers more than half of the corolla length and forms a significant floral component.

There is a basal bulge, surrounded by notable pink bracts, the pink tube bulging between the sepals, the mouth constricted, the lobes dark pink. The corolla is up to 6 mm long. The eight anthers and the style are covered inside the corolla. The plant's familiar flower profusion at the height of the blooming season occurs somewhere between end autumn and end spring. 

The species distribution is lower to middle elevations of Cape Peninsula mountain slopes only. 

The habitat is sandy flats and slopes covered in fynbos. The habitat population is deemed of least concern early in the twenty first century.

The species is a success in horticulture; too successful in Australia where it has escaped and invaded some grasslands and more (Manning and Helme, 2024; Clarke and Mackenzie, 2007; Manning, 2007; Baker and Oliver, 1967; iNaturalist; iSpot; https://pza.sanbi.org; http://redlist.sanbi.org).