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Common names:
Origin of name:
acrophilus = loving high regions
Diagnostic characters:
Clusters of small grey spathulate leaves
Medium solitary heads (rarely in small groups)
Pale yellow bracts
Description:
Small loosely branched, bushy shrub up to c. 300 mm tall, branches sometimes decumbent then rooting, thinly grey silky-woolly, young stems distantly and sparsely leafy, old stems with leaves crowded on dwarf axillary shoots. Leaves up to 15 x 6 mm, smaller on the dwarf shoots, spathulate with prominent midrib, often folded, tip almost truncate, mucronate, recurved, base much narrowed, sessile, both surfaces thinly grey woolly-felted. Heads homogamous, campanulate, c. 7 x 12 mm across the radiating bracts, solitary or 2�5 loosely corymbose at the branch tips. Involucral bracts in c. 5 series, loosely imbricate, graded, woolly on backs below, inner exceeding flowers, tips radiating, subacute to obtuse, dull white or pale yellow, sometimes crimson above stereome, outermost sometimes overlaid palest brown. Receptacle with fimbrils about equaling ovaries. Flowers 28�61, yellow. Achenes 1,25 mm long, cylindric, obscurely ribbed, with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, about equaling corolla, scabrid, tips subplumose, bases lightly fused.
Flowering mainly in December and January, but as early as November and as late as March.
Distribution:
A constituent of shrub communities in rocky places. Often on sandy flats or rocky slopes and plateaus, associated with proteoid and restiod elements. On the mountains of the southwestern Cape (excluding the Peninsula) from Wupperthal, Pakhuis Pass and the Cedarberg to Gydoberg, Skurweberg, Waboomsberg, Matroosberg and the Swartberg. Also on Anysberg. Between 900 and 1 900 m above sea level, but most records above 1 500 m.
Fynbos, Succulent Karoo and Thicket Biomes.
Taxonomy:
Literature:
Helichrysum acrophilum H. Bol. Trans. S. Afr. phil. Soc. 18,3: 389 (1907).
Type:
Lectotype: Cape, Koude Bokkeveld, Gydouwberg, 1 800 m, 19 January 1897, Schlechter 10049 (BOL; BM; E; G; PRE; S; Z, isolecto.).
Synonym(s):
Gnaphalium deltoides Thunb. Mus. Upsal. auct. 1827: 16 (1827), nomen (Thunberg, sheet 19127, UPS).
Helichrysum spathulatum Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 310 (1910), nom. illegit.
Vouchers:
Compton 8431 (BOL; NBG); Esterhuysen 20007 (BOL; PRE); Oliver 5541 (PRE); Stokoe SAM 56574 (PRE; SAM); Taylor 11693 (PRE).