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.https://plants.jstor.org/compilation/harveya.purpurea?searchUri=http://redlist.sanbi.org/species.php?species=1072-17 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.'Parasitic flowering plants' - Henning Heide-Jørgensen
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.
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