Gaultheria eriophylla (Pers.) Sleumer

A dwarf shrub growing to about 3 ft high; branchlets buff-pink when young and clad with a dense covering of curly brown hairs. Leaves oblong-ovate to broadly elliptic, with a mucronate tip, up to 21⁄4 in. long and 11⁄2 in. wide but decreasing in size towards the ends of the stems and the region of the inflorescences, covered on both sides with woolly hairs when young but later more or less glabrous above. Flowers borne in axillary racemes which are sometimes clustered at the ends of the shoots, forming apparently terminal panicles; the whole inflorescence, including the calyx and corolla, is reddish pink and clad with brown hairs; the individual flower-stalks are subtended by large bracts, and on each there are two alternate bracteoles near the base. Corollas urn-shaped, about 1⁄4 in. long, furnished with white hairs within; style glabrous; anther-cells each with two awns. Fruits black, about 3⁄16 in. wide. Bot. Mag., n.s., t. 254.

Native of S.E. Brazil, in the Organ Mountains and other ranges near the coast; introduced by Dr Sleumer in 1949 by means of seeds collected by him near Therezopolis, and distributed to gardens as G. willisiana. The reasons for referring these plants to G. eriophylla is explained by B. L. Burtt in the note accompanying the figure in the Botanical Magazine, to which we are indebted for most of the information given here.