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Origin of name:
alsinoides = like the genus Alsine
Diagnostic characters:
Long leaves
Solitary heads
Whitish bracts
Description:
Annual herb with a slender taproot, branches 30�150 mm long, many from the crown, slender, prostrate, loosely branched, reddish, loosely woolly, distantly leafy except at the crown and under the heads. Leaves 5�23 x 1�9 mm, spathulate to oblong-spathulate, apex obtuse, base narrowed, half-clasping, margins flat, both surfaces loosely grey-woolly. Heads homogamous or heterogamous, campanulate, c. 3�4 x 2,5 mm, in small leafy clusters at the branch tips. Involucral bracts in 4�5 series, graded, outer lightly webbed with wool to surrounding leaves, inner about equaling flowers, not radiating, tips very obtuse, somewhat concave, semipellucid, whitish to light golden-brown. Receptacle nearly smooth. Flowers 14�38, 0�3 female, 14�37 homogamous. Achenes 0,75 mm long, with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, tips scabrid, bases not cohering.
Flowering between July and October.
Distribution:
Probably always in seasonally damp places. Recorded from southernmost Namibia south to Vanrhynsdorp.
Succulent Karoo Biome.
Notes:
Specimens from north of the Orange River and near Port Nolloth have whitish or pale involucral bracts, only the innermost sometimes tinged light brown; further south, bracts are light golden-brown.
Taxonomy:
Literature:
Helichrysum alsinoides DC., Prodr. 6: 169 (1838); Harv. in F.C. 3: 214 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 296 (1910); Merxm. & Roessl. in Mitt. bot. StSamml., M�nch. 15: 365 (1979).
Type:
South Africa, Dr�ge 5811 (G-DC, holo.).
Synonym(s):
Gnaphalium alsinoides (DC.) Sch. Bip. in Bot. Ztg 3: 169 (1845).
Vouchers:
Compton11554 (M; NBG); Esterhuysen 1364 (BOL); Giess 13835 (M; PRE); Merxm�ller & Giess 28601 (M).