Common names:

White everlasting, Wit sewejaartjie (A)

Origin of name:

aden = a gland + karpos / carpum = a fruit / fruits

adenocarpum = glandular fruits

ammophilus = sand-loving

Diagnostic characters:

Basal leaf rosette

Large heads in branched inflorescence

Bracts white

Description:

Perennial robust herb, stock woody, crowned with 1�several leaf rosettes, flowering stems lateral, decumbent or erect, to 1 m tall, simple or forking above into a few- to many-headed very open corymb, glandular-pubescent or woolly, closely leafy. Radical leaves sub-orbicular to elliptic-oblong, prostrate, 20�40 (�140) x 15�25 (�40) mm, mostly glandular-pubescent; cauline leaves oblong to lanceolate, smaller than the radical and passing into inflorescence bracts, cobwebby or glandular-pubescent. Heads heterogamous, campanulate, 15�20 mm long, c. 25�35 mm across the radiating bracts. Involucral bracts in 9�11 series, graded, loosely imbricate, much exceeding the flowers, glossy, acute, pure white. Flowers c. 165�520, 20�90 female, 145�500 homogamous, yellow often tipped red. Achenes 0,75 mm long, barrel-shaped, with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles several, barbellate to subplumose in upper part, bases nude, not cohering.

Flowering between August and April.

Distribution:

In sandy, poorly drained grassland, often around the edges of marshy depressions. Recorded on the Tongaland plain, from Delagoa Bay and Inhaca Island in Mozambique to Lower Tugela district in KwaZulu-Natal.

Savanna Biome.

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Notes:

Two subspecies are recognized:

Radical leaves cobwebby or woolly, involucral bracts ranging from crimson to scarlet or pink, or these colours on white, or rarely pure white and then growing with plants with parti-coloured bracts

  (a) subsp. adenocarpum

Radical leaves glandular, very rarely cobwebby or woolly, involucral bracts always pure white

  (b) subsp. ammophilum

subsp. ammophilum generally is a much more robust plant than subsp. adenocarpum with stems sometimes attaining a height of 1 m, many-headed corymbs, pure white involucral bracts, and at least the radical leaves without wool at maturity.

Taxonomy:

Literature: 

Helichrysum adenocarpum DC. subsp. ammophilum Hilliard in Notes R. bot. Gdn Edinb. 32: 343 (1973), Compositae in Natal 240 (1977); DC.,Prodr. 6: 180 (1838); Harv. in F.C. 3: 229 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 335 (1910); Batten & Bokelmann, Wild. Flow. E. Cape Prov. 156, plate 125,2 (1966); Compton, Fl. Swaziland 627 (1976).

Type:

KwaZulu-Natal, Ingwavuma distr., Ilala Flats past Mosi swamp on road to Maputa, 20 xii 1968, Pooley 268 (NU, holo.; E; NH, iso.).

Synonym(s): 

Gnaphalium adenocarpum (DC.) Sch. Bip. in Bot. Ztg 3:  170 (1845).

Vouchers:

Moll 4716 (NU; PRE); Pooley 1712 (E; K; MO; NU; PRE; S); Strey 6803 (NU; PRE).