Erica cinereaL.

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WFO wfo-0000671681 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Erica cinerea, photographed by Pete Bradshaw
fig. a Pete Bradshaw, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-09 / obs. 204826346
Erica cinerea, photographed by Pete Bradshaw
fig. b Pete Bradshaw, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164960210
Erica cinerea, photographed by Pete Bradshaw
fig. c Pete Bradshaw, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164437656
Erica cinerea, photographed by James Clow
fig. d James Clow, CC0 1.0 / obs. 163579596
Erica cinerea, photographed by James Clow
fig. e James Clow, CC0 1.0 / obs. 162871395
Erica cinerea, photographed by Jon Mortin
fig. f Jon Mortin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 162316346
Erica cinerea, photographed by Charlie Farrell
fig. g Charlie Farrell, CC0 1.0 / obs. 164282837
Erica cinerea, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. h Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159409627

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 12 botanical countries

Regions where Erica cinerea is native: Algeria, Belgium, Føroyar, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain AlgeriaBelgiumFranceGermanyIrelandItalyNetherlandsNorwayPortugalSpain Føroyar
Native distribution of Erica cinerea, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Belgium BGM EUROPE
Føroyar FOR
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Netherlands NET
Norway NOR
Portugal POR
Spain SPA
Algeria ALG AFRICA

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 814 in flower of 835 examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Erica cinerea 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. 814 of 835 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 15 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.

  • Eremocallis cinerea (L.) Gray
  • Erica cinerea f. alba (Aiton) D.C.McClint.
  • Erica cinerea var. alba Aiton
  • Erica cinerea var. cinerea
  • Erica cinerea var. numidica Maire
  • Erica cinerea var. polypetala Bean
  • Erica humilis Neck.
  • Erica mutabilis Salisb.
  • Erica numidica (Maire) Romo & Borat.
  • Erica tenuifolia Bubani
  • Erica viridipurpurea Gouan
  • Ericalluna bealeana Krüssm.
  • Ericodes cinereum (L.) Kuntze
  • Ericoides cinereum (L.) Kuntze
  • Ericoides humile (Salisb.) Kuntze

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.