Diagnostic characters:

Long fine linear leaves, often sickle-shaped
Compact inflorescences with clusters of small heads

Description:

Perennial herb with a slender woody creeping rootstock, stems tufted, simple or branching at or near the base, erect to c. 150�200 mm, white-felted, closely leafy. Leaves mostly 8�15 x 0,5�1 mm, diminishing slightly upwards, suberect, imbricate, linear, apex acute, mucronate, sometimes strongly recurved, base broad, margins revolute, lower surface white-felted, upper with thin 'tissue-paper' indumentum of woolly hairs. Heads heterogamous, oblong-campanulate, c. 3 x 2 mm, many in compact terminal clusters 10�15 (�30) mm across. Involucral bracts in c. 4 series, thinly webbed together with wool, graded, closely imbricate, inner nearly equaling flowers, pellucid, straw-coloured, tips tawny, occasionally purplish, blunt, crisped-denticulate, somewhat squarrose. Receptacle shortly toothed. Flowers 18�31, 8�15 female, 9�18 homogamous, female sometimes equaling or outnumbering homogamous, bright yellow. Achenes not seen, ovaries with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, nearly equaling corolla, scabridulous, bases cohering by patent cilia.

Flowering in February.

Distribution:

Grows in stony or sandy turf on hilltops and slopes at c. 1 675 m. Recorded from the Harrismith-Bethlehem-Ficksburg area of the Free State, Leribe in Lesotho, and the Witteberg and near Dordrecht in the Eastern Cape.

Grassland Biome.

Notes:

Can be confused with H. dregeanum, but is distinguished by its simple stems terminating in many-headed clusters.

Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum ammitophilum Hilliard in Notes R. bot. Gdn Edinb. 40: 250 (1982).

Type: 

Free State, Harrismith, Queen's Hill, 5 500 ft, 20 ii 1970, Hilliard 4954 (NU, holo.; E; K; MO; M; PRE; S, iso.).

Synonym(s): 

Vouchers:

Acocks 11200 (PRE); Cooper 617 (BM; E; TCD; Z); Dieterlen 502 (K; PRE; SAM; Z; NH and BM mixed with H. rugulosum); Scheepers 1382 (PRE); Story 913 (PRE).

top