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Origin of name:
bellidiastrum = Somewhat like the genus Bellis
Diagnostic characters:
Large solitary heads
White / straw bracts
Description:
Rhizomatous perennial herb with one to several leaf rosettes at the crown, flowering stems usually solitary, c. 120 (�250) mm tall, loosely greyish-white woolly, leafy. Radical leaves prostrate, up to c. 70 x 30 mm, elliptic to obovate, loosely white- or greyish-woolly above at first, later shortly pubescent, white-felted below, the older leaves in particular commonly discolorous, drying greyish or blackish above, whitish below; cauline leaves up to c. 15 x 5 mm, becoming smaller upwards, distant, narrowly elliptic, greyish-white woolly. Heads homogamous, campanulate, c. 15 mm long, 30 mm across the fully radiating bracts, solitary. Involucral bracts in c. 15 series, graded, loosely imbricate, much exceeding the flowers, acute, outer palest golden-brown, sometimes pinkish or crimson, inner opaque white, pinkish at the base inside. Receptacle nearly smooth. Flowers 217�277. Achenes 1 mm, ellipsoid, with duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, tips subplumose, bases with patent cilia, sometimes cohering.
Flowers between November and January.
Distribution:
Favours damp turf slopes, particularly seepage areas and the banks of streams. Recorded on the high Lesotho mountains and the high Drakensberg from the Oxbow area and The Sentinel south to Naude's Nek (across the Cape Drakensberg near Maclear) and Saalboom Nek (near Barkly East) between 2 000 and 3 300 m; also on Ngeli Mtn on the KwaZulu-Natal-Transkei border, then a disjunction to the Amatola Mountains in the E. Cape.
Grassland Biome.
Taxonomy:
Literature:
Helichrysum bellidiastrum Moeser in Bot. Jb. 48: 338 (1912); Hilliard, Compositae in Natal 226 (1977).
Type:
Basutoland [Lesotho] Mont aux Sources, Flanagan 1966 (K; PRE, iso.).
Synonym(s):
Vouchers:
Hilliard & Burtt 7039(E; K; MO; NU); Hilliard & Burtt 5826 (E; K; NH; NU; S; Z); Trauseld 891 (NU); Wright 1087 (E; K; NU).