Origin of name:

anomalus = diverging from the usual, abnormal

Diagnostic characters:

Small linear grey leaves

Medium sized heads in small compact to open inflorescences

Yellow bracts with tips spreading

Description:

Bushy dwarf shrublet up to 300 mm tall and as much across, branches closely grey-woolly, densely leafy. Leaves 3�14 x 1�3 mm, diminishing in size upwards, much reduced and distant below the flowering heads, linear, lanceolate or oblong, apex acute or obtuse, mucronate, sometimes recurved, base broad, half-clasping, margins revolute, both surfaces closely grey-woolly. Heads heterogamous, cylindric-campanulate, c. 4 x 2,5 mm, few to many in dense cymose clusters terminating the branches. Involucral bracts in c. 6 series, graded, closely imbricate, very obtuse, outer pale brown, pellucid, inner about equaling flowers, tips opaque or pellucid, bright canary yellow, minutely radiating. Receptacle with fimbrils 2 to 3 times as long as the ovaries. Flowers 17�50, 4�12 female, 13�40 homogamous. Achenes c. 0,75 mm long, glabrous. Pappus bristles very few, about equaling the ovary in length.

Flowering between September and May.

Distribution:

Grows gregariously and with other dwarf shrubs on bare, often rocky, areas, or in rough grassland. Recorded from the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve, then a disjunction to Swartberg Pass and Robinson Pass, thence eastwards across the mountains and through the coastal districts to Grahamstown, King William's Town and Haga-Haga near East London, and north and east across the mountains to the Graaff-Reinet and Middelburg area, to the Witteberg, and the Drakensberg from about Barkly Pass to Qacha's Nek and Sehlabathebe in Lesotho.

Fynbos, Succulent Karoo, Grassland, Thicket and Savanna biomes.

Notes:

Very variable in leaf size and to some degree in indumentum; distinctive by virtue of its extraordinarily long fimbrils and reduced pappus.

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Taxonomy:

Literature: 

Helichrysum anomalum Less., Syn. Comp. 303 (1832); DC., Prodr. 6: 204 (1838); Harv. in F.C. 3: 249 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 255 (1910); Levyns in Adamson & Salter, Fl. Cape Penins. 784 (1950); Hilliard, Compositae in Natal 167 (1977).

Type: 

Cape, Mund & Maire (B�).

Synonym(s): 

Manopappus anomalus (Less.) Sch. Bip. in Flora, Regensburg 27: 677 (1844). H. anomalum var. turbinatum Harv. in F.C. 3: 249 (1865). Gnaphalium anomalum  (Less.) O. Kuntze, Rev. Gen. 3,2: 150 (1898).

Tanacetum gnaphaloidesSteud. in Flora, Regensburg 13: 542 (1830), nomen.

Helichrysum anomalumvar. rufescens DC., Prodr. 6: 204 (1838). Type: Uitenhage div., Zwartkops River, Ecklon 1577 (G-DC, holo.; SAM, iso.).

H. anomalum var. brevifolium DC., 1. c. Type: Uitenhage div., Eland River, Ecklon 1868 (G-DC, holo.; SAM, iso.).

H. anomalum var. ovatum Harv., 1. c. Type: nothing cited, nothing annotated in TCD.

Vouchers:

Acocks 17650 (PRE); Compton 10753 (NBG); Esterhuysen 13651 (PRE); Hilliard & Burtt 6659 (E; K; MO; NU; S).