Erica abietina (Honeysuckle heath)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Erica abietina, photographed by Tim Kirsten — fig. a Tim Kirsten, CC0 1.0 / 2022-03-06 / obs. 181800691

Erica abietina, photographed by desertnaturalist — fig. b desertnaturalist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203759631

Erica abietina, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. c Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 107671206

Erica abietina, photographed by Chris Vynbos — fig. e Chris Vynbos, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 36803701

Erica abietina, photographed by Caroline Voget — fig. f Caroline Voget, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 31111884

Erica abietina, photographed by Alec McClay — fig. h Alec McClay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175107035

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 1 botanical country

Native distribution of Erica abietina, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Cape Provinces	CPP	AFRICA

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 141 in flower of 141 examined

100%

Proportion of examined Erica abietina in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	7	7	100%	65% to 100%
Feb	9	9	100%	70% to 100%
Mar	6	6	100%	61% to 100%
Apr	25	25	100%	87% to 100%
May	16	16	100%	81% to 100%
Jun	10	10	100%	72% to 100%
Jul	18	18	100%	82% to 100%
Aug	20	20	100%	84% to 100%
Sep	13	13	100%	77% to 100%
Oct	3	3	too few examined
Nov	4	4	too few examined
Dec	10	10	100%	72% to 100%

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Erica abietina observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 141 of 141 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 16 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Erica abietina var. abietina
Erica coccinea P.J.Bergius
Erica conica G.Lodd. ex J.Forbes
Erica conica G.Lodd.
Erica hesseana J.C.Wendl. ex Klotzsch
Erica phylicifolia Salisb.
Erica purpurea Andrews
Erica salisburia Andrews
Erica salisburii Andrews
Erica sanguinea G.Sinclair
Erica sanguinea G.Lodd.
Erica spissifolia Salisb.
Ericoides abietinum (L.) Kuntze
Ericoides conicum (G.Lodd.) Kuntze
Ericoides hesseanum (J.C.Wendl. ex Klotzsch) Kuntze
Syringodea sanguinea (G.Sinclair) G.Don

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.