BOYS BEFORE FLOWER 15

It seems apporopriate with this line from his "The Blue-Eyed Lassie" to wax a bit romantic in memory of Robert Burns (1759-1796), the poet of Scotland, whose day it is tomorrow.
The aristean blue of this oligocephala flashed up at me from the gray embers of the 'fynbos' fire that raged on the slopes of Fernkloof, above Hermanus, South Africa, early last year. Immediately after the fire, revitalisation began, and now new green and the bright colors of red Erica cerinthoides, deep-blue Thereianthus bracteolatus and yellow-hearted purple Erepsia conceps paint the hillside.
The naming history of Aristea is too complicated to paraphrase here. Carolus Linnaeus was, of course, closely involved and his travelling naturalist friends sent him much material from South Africa, among which various aristeas. In one of his letters he writes a line: "Who can look at so fair a flower without falling in love with it?" No! but he is not referring here to this or any other flower. That letter is addressed to Lady Anne Vane Monson, already married. Linnaeus has never seen her in person - how fitting is Burns's line - but her reputation as a botanist is so great that he confesses to dream about her even though 'I have never seen your face'. In short, he requests permission to use her name for one of his plants. But not for this serenely blue Aristea, which remains etched on my mind, and which I don't want to keep from you!

I took this photo by the side of a small hiking trail in the Drakensberg region, near Cathedral Peak. I think, but I'm not sure, that it is an Erica verticillata.
Edit: Turns out it's more likely to be Leonotic leonuros.
However I'll tell you the story about Erica verticillata anyway:

It was thought to have become extinct by the 1960s, with the last recorded collection from the wild in 1908. (It survived in cultured botanic gardens for a while longer).

However staff at the Kirstenbosch Gardens were able to track down some seeds and cuttings:
In 1984 the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London, received a cutting from a private collection, which they forwarded to South Africa.
In 2001 the Heather Society of Britain found a plant in Southampton, and sent some cuttings to Kirstenbosch.

The plant was re-introduced into the wilds.. where I found it.

Or maybe this is just a photo of something that looks the same to me?

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