Common names:

Phefo-ea-liliba (SS)

Origin of name:

Named after Johannes Ludwig Leopold Mund (1791-1831), a pharmacist, botanists and land surveyor from Berlin who worked in South Africa.

Diagnostic characters:

Bi-coloured leaves, white-woolly below
Medium-sized heads
Open branched inflorescence

Description:

Robust perennial herb up to 1.5 m tall, stock stout, woody, creeping, slender leafy runners as well, flowering stem simple, woody, up to 8 mm diam. at base, herbaceous, upper part thinly white-felted, leafy throughout. Radical leaves up to 600 mm long, half of this petiolar, blade elliptic, up to 60 mm broad, apex acute or subacute, base tapering into the long narrowly winged petiole, expanded below, clasping, upper surface glabrous, finely reticulate, often rugose, lower white-felted, prominently triplinerved, reticulate; cauline leaves oblong-lanceolate, much narrowed to the base, soon linear-lanceolate upwards, acute, base decurrent in long narrow stem wings; indumentum as in radical leaves. Heads homogamous, campanulate, c. 4 x 3.5 mm, many in cymose clusters arranged in a large, much branched corymbose panicle. Involucral bracts in 5�6 series, graded, closely imbricate, inner about equaling flowers, not radiating, opaque creamy-white. Receptacle with fimbrils equaling ovaries. Flowers 18�24. Achenes not seen, ovaries glabrous. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, scabrid, bases cohering strongly by patent cilia, some light fusion as well.

Flowers between February and April.

Distribution:

Grows in marshy places, often along streamsides or in seepage, forming dense stands because of its creeping rootstock. Widespread, from the highlands of Angola, Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe through the northern provinces of South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, NE. Free State, KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, W. Transkei, and the Cape as far west as Swellendam and Toise River.

Savanna and Grassland Biomes.

top

Notes:

Easily recognized by its winged stems, discolorous rugose leaves and large panicles of small creamy heads.

Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum mundii Harv. in F.C. 3: 243 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 271 (1910); Compton, Fl. Swaziland 631 (1976); Hilliard, Compositae in Natal 182 (1977).

Type:

Cape, Swellendam, Wagenmaker's Bosch, Mund (TCD, holo.; K, iso.).

Synonym(s):

Vouchers:

Compton 25887 (NBG); Hilliard 5459 (E; K; MO; NU; S); MacOwan 1472 (BOL); Wilms 728 (E; NU); Tyson 2761 (SAM).