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Common names:
Origin of name:
albus / -a/ -um = white
Description:
Perennial herb with 1 or a few leaf rosettes clustered on the crown of a woody stock, flowering stems 1 or occasionally 2, lateral to the new rosette, up to 150 mm tall, loosely greyish-white woolly, closely leafy. Radical leaves up to 60 x 25 mm, but commonly c. 35 x 25 mm, obovate, thickly and loosely greyish-white woolly; cauline leaves oblanceolate, up to 30 x 7 mm, decreasing in size upwards, woolly. Heads heterogamous, campanulate, c. 20 mm long, double that across the radiating bracts, solitary. Involucral bracts in c. 11 series, graded, loosely imbricate, much exceeding flowers, acute, glossy white, crimson at base inside. Receptacle shortly honeycombed. Flowers 172�224, 19�26 female, 153�199 homogamous. Achenes c. 1,5 mm long, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, tips barbellate, bases with patent cilia scarcely cohering.
Flowering between January and March.
Distribution:
Grows in small colonies on steep, broken turf slopes and low basalt cliffs. Recorded from only a limited area of the high Drakensberg on the KwaZulu-Natal-Lesotho border, from Cathedral Peak (Bergville distr.) to Garden Castle Nature Reserve (Underberg distr.) between c. 2 000 and 3 300 m above sea level.
Grassland Biome.
Notes:
Resembles solitary-headed specimens of H. adenocarpum, but is readily distinguished by its glabrous ovaries.
Rarely collected.
Taxonomy:
Literature:
Helichrysum album N.E. Br.Kew Bull. 1895: 24 (1895); Hilliard, Compositae in Natal 235 (1977).
Type:
KwaZulu-Natal, on the Drakensberg at Bushman's River Pass, near the snowline, 7 000�8 000 ft., Evans 48 (K, holo; NH, iso.).
Synonym(s):
Vouchers:
Trauseld 925 (NU); Wright 153 (E; NU).