Diagnostic characters:

Description:

Dwarf twiggy shrublet up to c. 100 mm high, main stem up to 10 mm diam., gnarled, branchlets grey-woolly, closely leafy to the tips. Leaves imbricate, mostly 2.5�5 x 0.5�2 mm, linear or narrowly oblong, keeled, apex obtuse, slightly recurved in older leaves, base broad, half-clasping, both surfaces grey woolly-felted. Heads homogamous, campanulate, c. 5 x 3 mm (6 mm across the radiating bracts), solitary or few loosely associated at the tips of the innumerable short branchlets, surrounded by a few leaves lightly webbed together. Involucral bracts in 4�5 series, graded, imbricate, 2 outer series brown, inner exceeding flowers, tips subacute to acute, opaque white, sometimes tinged red above the stereome and then the white tips often streaked pink, radiating. Receptacle shortly honeycombed. Flowers 15�21. Achenes not seen, ovaries with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, scabrid, bases cohering lightly by patent cilia.

 Flowers in September, October and November.

Distribution:

Grows on white quartzite patches in rocky areas. Recorded only from the Karoo Garden, White Hill, and the mountains near Matjiesfontein, both in Laingsburg district.

?Succulent and Nama Karoo Biomes.

Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum archeri Compton in Trans. R. Soc. S. Afr. 19: 315 (1931).

Type:

Lectotype: Laingsburg div., Whitehill, on white quartzite patches, 13 x 1929, Compton 3597 (BOL; K, isolecto.).

Synonym(s): 

Vouchers: 

Compton 12633, 16283 (NBG); Compton 5907 (BOL); Foley 102 (PRE).