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Harveya purpurea
Harveya purpurea is an annual herb with large, showy flowers and scale-like leaves, parasitic on the roots of shrubs and trees, endemic to South Africa in the Eastern and Western Cape. It occurs from the Cederberg to the Cape Peninsula, and along the coastal belt to Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, mainly among fynbos, on stony slopes and sandy flats.
Harveya species are native to Africa, Madagascar, and Yemen. This species is holoparasitic- that is, entirely non-photosynthetic, with a preference for members of the Campanulaceae such as Roella and Wahlenbergia. The disabling of the photosynthesis gene has happened independently several times in Scrophulariales.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Harveya purpurea by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
