Diagnostic characters:

Prostrate herb

Large solitary heads

White bracts

Description:

Dwarf subshrub, rootstock creeping, branched, each branch producing a rosette of leaves with 2 'to' several aerial stems radiating from the crown, prostrate to ascending, 10�150 mm long, simple or once or twice forked near the tip, silky grey-woolly, closely leafy. Leaves imbricate, blade c. 5�13 x 2�7 mm, scarcely diminishing upwards, elliptic-ovate, base narrowed, c. 3�4 x 2 mm, apex obtuse or subacute, apiculate, slightly recurved, both surfaces enveloped in silvery grey 'tissue-paper' indumentum that webs the leaf bases to the stems. Heads homogamous or heterogamous, campanulate, c. 8�10 x 16 mm across the radiating bracts, solitary at the branch tips, closely invested by leaves. Involucral bracts in c. 5 series, loosely imbricate, graded, inner slightly exceeding flowers, all acute or subacute, outer membranous, palest brown, inner opaque, dull white, tipped palest brown or pure white. Receptacle shortly honeycombed. Flowers c. 44�58, 0�5 female, 44�58 homogamous, yellow, sometimes tipped pink. Achenes narrowly obovate in outline, with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, tips scabrid, bases cohering by patent cilia.

Flowering between November and January, and seems to be conspicuous after burning.

Distribution:

Grows on stony slopes. Endemic to the SW. and S. Cape, from the Koude Bokkeveld in Ceres division across the mountains (Baviaansberg, Seven Weeks Poort, Swartberg, Kouga Mountains) to the Great Winterhoek Mountains near Uitenhage between c. 900 and 2 000 m.

Fynbos biome.

Taxonomy:

Literature: 

Helichrysum altigenum Schltr. & Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 322 (1910).

Type: 

Western Cape, Koude Bokkeveld, Elandsfontein, 5 000 ft, 18 i 1897, Schlechter 10026 (BM; BOL; E; G; PRE; S; Z, iso.).

Synonym(s):

Vouchers:

Esterhuysen 27983 (BOL; PRE); Nordenstam 1925 (E; S); Stokoe 4544 (BOL).