• The Cape Flats Erica is a tall shrub.
• The leaves are very small and arranged around the stems.
• It flowers in Summer, producing clusters of pink tube-shaped flowers that look like a bottle brush.

• The Cape Flats Erica used to be common in damp Sand Fynbos in areas like Zeekoevlei, Wynberg, Kenilworth and along the Black River.
• It went Extinct in the Wild and was no longer found growing on the Cape Flats after the 1940s.
• Its flowers were over-picked and most of its natural habitat, seasonally damp areas in Sand Fynbos, was developed for housing.

People thought that the Cape Flats Erica was extinct. But plants were found in Botanical Gardens in various parts of the world:

• Protea Park, a municipal park in Pretoria
• The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in London 
• Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town
• Schönbrunn Garden in Vienna, Austria. This garden also had specimens of Erica turgida, another erica that is now Extinct in the Wild in South Africa. These two ericas were originally collected in Cape Town in the late 1700s. They have been grown as pot plants in the garden for more than 200 years!

• Kirstenbosch has been working with Rondevlei Nature Reserve to bring the Cape Flats Erica back to the Cape Flats.
• Staff made cuttings of the plant from Pretoria and planted these in various places at Rondevlei to test where they would grow best.
• Once they found out what conditions suited the erica, they planted out many more plants, which are now growing well at Rondevlei.
• Since then, residents of Zeekoevlei have replanted the Cape Flats Erica in a community nature area they have created between their houses and the wetland.

Left: Adonis Adonis with one of the Cape Flats Erica plants propagated at Kirstenbosch. He discovered a plant growing in a clearing  in the forest at Kirstenbosch which was used to bring  the species back from the brink of extinction.