Origin of name:

ambo = both together, the two

-ense = indicating the origin or place

Diagnostic characters:

Flowering branches with many leaf clusters on short stalks, each bearing one heads
Bracts bright white
Heads somewhat larger than H. spiciforme

Description:

Perennial herb, main stems several from the crown, up to 600 mm long, erect (?) or prostrate (?), woody, up to 3 mm diam., glandular-hispid, thinly woolly, flowering branches stiffly divaricate, up to 70 mm long, slender (c. 1 mm diam.), glandular-hispid. Leaves on main stems up to 35 x 10 mm, oblanceolate, apex obtuse or subacute, base much narrowed, both surfaces greyish-white woolly, on flowering twigs up to 8 x 2 mm, linear, apex obtuse or subacute, base broad, half-clasping, margins revolute, both surfaces glandular-hispid, woolly only in extreme youth. Heads heterogamous, campanulate, c. 8�9 x 8 mm, c. 12 mm when expanded, solitary, sessile at the tips of much abbreviated dwarf shoots, appearing merely surrounded by leaves, snoots racemosely arranged, the whole twig very floriferous. Involucral bracts in c. 5 series, graded, loosely imbricate, inner exceeding flowers, tips radiating, subopaque white, very acute. Receptacle nearly smooth. Flowers c. 36�55, 7�15 female, 29�40 homogamous. Achenes not seen, ovaries with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, scabridulous, bases cohering strongly by patent cilia.

Flowering in July and August.

Distribution:

Grows in sand. Recorded only from northern Namibia, from the environs of Olukonda in the west to Tamsoe and Andara (Okavango) in the east.

Savanna Biome.

Notes:

Distinguished from H. spiciforme by its more branching habit (dwarf axillary shoots bearing solitary heads on side branches, not directly on the main stems except at their tips), leaves on the side branches soon losing their wool and then contrasting with the persistently woolly leaves on the main stems, and possibly by larger (longer) heads.

Very rarely collected; the description above is based almost entirely on the isotype in Geneva.

top

Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum amboense Schinz in Bull. Herbarium Boissier 6: 561 (1898).

Type: 

Namibia, Amboland, Oshiheke near Olukonda, August 1894, Rautanen 162 (Z, holo.; BM; G, iso.).

Synonym(s): 

H. spiciforme DC. var. amboense (Schinz) Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 302 (1910); H. spiciforme DC. subsp. amboense (Schinz) Merxm. in Mitt. bot. StSamml. M�nch. 2: 330 (1957), F.S.W.A. 139: 97 (1967).

Vouchers:

Maguire 1629 (BOL; NBG; PRE).