Gaultheria hispida R. Br.

An evergreen shrub 2 to 3 ft, occasionally 6 to 7 ft high; young shoots furnished with spreading reddish bristles, sometimes downy also. Leaves leathery, oblong or narrowly elliptic-lanceolate, very shortly stalked, minutely toothed, tapered at both ends, the apex with a short mucro, 1 to 21⁄4 in. long, 1⁄4 to 3⁄4 in. wide, dull dark green and eventually glabrous above, downy or bristly on the midrib beneath. Inflorescenses terminal on young shoots and short axillary branchlets, forming in effect a panicle; they are noticeably bracteate, the lower bracts sterile and imbricated, the upper ones separated and each subtending a flower. Corolla broadly urn-shaped, 1⁄6 in. long, white. Calyx-lobes triangular-ovate, enlarging and becoming succulent and snow-white, enclosing the seed-vessel and forming a flattened, globose, berry-like fruit 3⁄8 to 1⁄2 in. wide.

Native of Tasmania up to 4,000 ft. Although it has survived even hardish winters at Kew and passed through mild ones uninjured, it really requires a warmer locality to do itself justice. The first Lord Wakehurst showed a charming plant from his garden in Sussex at Westminster in August 1927, and the species still grows there in the Heath Garden.