''Erica afra'', the water heath, is a species of flowering plant in the genus

Erica Erica or ERICA may refer to: * Erica (given name) * Erica (plant), ''Erica'' (plant), a flowering plant genus * Erica (chatbot), a service of Bank of America * Erica (video game), ''Erica'' (video game), a 2019 FMV video game * Erica (spider), ' ...

. It's a small tree, sometimes a shrub, that grows in riparian habitats and on forest edges and occurs from the

Western Cape The Western Cape ( ; , ) is a provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the List of South African provinces by area, fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , an ...

to the

Drakensberg The Drakensberg (Zulu language, Zulu: uKhahlamba, Sotho language, Sotho: Maloti, Afrikaans: Drakensberge) is the eastern portion of the Great Escarpment, Southern Africa, Great Escarpment, which encloses the central South Africa#Geography, Sout ...

KwaZulu-Natal KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN) is a Provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the government merged the Zulu people, Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu language, Zulu) and ...

and

Lesotho Lesotho, formally the Kingdom of Lesotho and formerly known as Basutoland, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Entirely surrounded by South Africa, it is the largest of only three sovereign enclave and exclave, enclaves in the world, t ...

. The tree's flowers look like bells. The tree's national tree number is 572.

Taxonomy

The etymology of the original species name ''caffra'' is related to kaffir, an ethnic slur used towards black people in Africa. At the July 2024

International Botanical Congress International Botanical Congress (IBC) is an international meeting of Botany, botanists in all scientific fields, authorized by the International Association of Botanical and Mycological Societies (IABMS) and held every six years, with the locatio ...

, a vote was held with the result that "''caffra''" related names will be emended to ''afra'' related ones, with the implementation of this being done at the end of July 2024.

References

afra Flora of the Cape Provinces Flora of KwaZulu-Natal Flora of Lesotho Plants described in 1753 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{Ericaceae-stub