Parasitic (plant which obtains all of its food from another living plant) perennial up to 45cm. Leaves reduced to scales and lacking chlorophyll; flowers in long racemes, tubular with short petals, purple with white throat, upper petals projecting forward; stigma slender.

Plants in the genus Harveya turn black when handled or bruised and on drying. Used by early settlers to make ink.

After: William Henry Harvey (1811-1866), Irish born botanist and algologist (study of Algae), pioneer of South African systematic botany, keeper of the herbarium at Trinity College, Dublin.