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Common names:
Albany everlasting
Origin of name:
albanense refers to the region in the Eastern Cape where the type specimen was collected.
Diagnostic characters:
Branches densely leafy
Leaves grey above, silvery below
Bracts bright yellow with a dark brown outer layer
Inflorescence compact
Description:
Perennial herb spreading by means of woody underground runners, flowering stems up to 400 mm long, erect or decumbent, simple or virgately branched, silky, closely leafy. Leaves erect, imbricate, mostly 8�20 x 2�6 mm, elliptic, apex obtuse or subacute, mucronate, somewhat hooked, base half-clasping, upper surface with thin skin-like indumentum, green drying grey, lower surface white silky-tomentose. Heads homogamous, turbinate, 3 x 2 mm, very many in dense, roundish, terminal corymbose clusters matted together with wool at the base, these clusters congested in a flattish corymbose cyme mostly 15�20 mm across. Involucral bracts in c. 4 series, graded, outer brown, inner bright canary-yellow, subopaque, about equalling flowers, not radiating. Receptacle very shortly honeycombed. Flowers 8�12. Achenes not seen, ovaries glabrous. Pappus bristles few, tips shortly plumose, bases nude, not cohering.
Flowering between July and October but mainly in August and September.
Distribution:
In grassland or shrub communities, often on steep slopes with proteoid elements and heaths. Confined to the Eastern Cape, ranging from Queenstown south and west to the Albany, Uitenhage, Port Elizabeth and Humansdorp districts.
Fynbos, Thicket and Savanna Biomes.
Notes:
Can be confused with H. glomeratum but easily distinguished by its differently shaped leaves with different indumentum and heads containing more flowers; it also flowers earlier.
Taxonomy:
Literature:
Helichrysum albanense Hilliard in Notes R. bot. Gdn Edinb. 40: 249 (1982).
Type:
Eastern Cape, Albany distr., between Riebeek East and Grahamstown, Burchell 3534 (G-DC, holo.; K; PRE, iso.).
Synonym(s):
Helichrysum subglomeratum Less. var. imbricatum DC., Prodr. 6: 186 (1838); Harv. in F.C. 3: 236 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 249 (1910); Hilliard & Burtt in Notes R. bot. Gdn Edinb. 32: 362 (1973). Type as above.
Vouchers:
Acocks 21253 (K; PRE); Hilliard & Burtt 10824 (E; K; MO; NU; S); Long 708 (K; PRE); Taylor 9540 (PRE); Thode A878 (K; PRE).