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Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
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'Erica cinerea' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
A low shrub from 6 in. to 11⁄2 ft high, with rather stiff, much-divided branches; young shoots downy. Leaves normally three in a whorl, linear, 1⁄8 to 1⁄4 in. long, flat above, convex beneath, pointed, deep green and glabrous. Flowers produced from June to September in terminal umbels of four to eight flowers, or in racemes 1 to 3 in. long; corolla egg-shaped, 1⁄4 in. long, bright purple, with four teeth at the opening. Calyx-lobes narrow-lanceolate, one-third the length of the corolla, semi-transparent, glabrous; flower-stalk 1⁄8 to 1⁄6 in. long, downy.
Native of W. Europe from Norway to Spain and N. Italy, and very generally distributed over the moors of Britain. It is, perhaps, the most beautiful of the dwarf summer- and autumn-flowering heaths, and produces an enormous profusion of blossom. In cultivated ground in the Thames Valley it is apt to be shortlived, growing too fast in the early summer and often scorched by excessive heat in July and August. It is improved by cutting over in the early spring before growth starts. It has varied much in the colour of the flowers, and the dozen or so clones in commerce when the first edition of this work was published has now risen to one hundred. For the following short selection we are indebted to the Royal Horticultural Society:
The clone ‘Graham Thomas’, tall-growing with light pink flowers, is in cultivation in the Savill Garden and in the R.H.S. Garden at Wisley. The original plant was found by a roadside about 1975.