British Native Trees
and Shrubs

Bell Heather Erica cinerea (Ericaceae)

Delightful little bright reddish-purple, bell-shaped flowers smother the crown of this compact, evergreen shrub from summer right through autumn. Its numerous, erect, branching stems grow up to 60 cm and carry tiny, shiny, dark-green linear leaves with rolled-back margins, grouped in whorls of three. From July to the end of September, the racemes of flowers, each up to 6 mm long, appear at the ends of the stems. The insignificant seed capsules ripen in autumn inside the dry, dead flowers.

Bell heather thrives only on acid soils with pH below 6.5, and is found on dry lowland heaths and moors up to 600 m in north Yorkshire, but is absent from large areas of the Midlands.

With its tight, neat habit and long flowering season, this small evergreen shrub is excellent as ground cover or forming mounds in the rock garden or raised bed. It prefers full sun in an open position, but will grow in semi-shade, and it must have free-draining, acid soil. Bell heather is drought-tolerant and thrives in dry conditions. It is easily propagated by layering or from cuttings taken in late summer from the current year’s growth. Once rooted they can be set out in a nursery bed the following spring. It is more difficult to raise the plant from seed because the dead flowers must be dried and rubbed through a fine sieve to extract the seeds before sowing in spring in a greenhouse or cold frame. Different colour forms may be available in garden centres, but beware of sterile cultivars.

The nectar-filled flowers attract solitary wasps, but if the flowers are too narrow for their heads they bore in from the side and by-pass the pollination mechanism. Bell heather is the foodplant of true lovers knot, one of our commonest moorland moths. The low-growing mounds protect ground-feeding birds such as wrens and are less prone to grazing by rabbits than common heather.

Page last updated - January 10, 2002  

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