Origin of name:

capensis / -e  = from the Cape of Good Hope (sens. lat.), South Africa

Diagnostic characters:

Almost round leaves with sharp tips
Compact inflorescence on long stalk
Small clusters of medium sized heads
Bracts hairy, bract hairs yellowish or brownish

Description:

Perennial herb, cushion-forming, stems diffuse, prostrate or scrambling, occasionally rooting at the nodes, branching, young parts greyish-white woolly-felted, closely leafy, flowering twigs with distant reduced leaves. Leaves mostly 11-14 x 5-6 mm, diminishing slightly upwards, then abruptly much reduced and distant below the heads, obovate to obovate-oblong, narrowed to the base, uppermost oblong, sessile, apex rounded or obtuse, mucronate, upper surface thinly greyish-white woolly, often glabrescent, lower thickly and persistently woolly. Heads heterogamous, campanulate, c. 4 x 4 mm up to c. 12 in congested rounded terminal clusters. Involucral bracts in 4-5 series, imbricate, graded, inner equaling flowers, not radiating , lanceolate to oblong, straw-coloured, tips rounded or acute, often dark, whole bract thickly silky-villous dorsally, hairs yellowish. Receptacle smooth. Flowers 15-29, 4-6 female, 11-23 homogamous. Achenes not seen, ovaries 5-ribbed, with duplex hairs, not myxogenic. Pappus bristles many, shaft barbellate, becoming shortly plumose above, bases cohering by patent cilia.

Flowers between September and December, mainly in November and December.

Distribution:

On mountains where it favours damp shady places on cliffs or among rocks, c. 600-1500 m. Endemic to the SW. and S. Cape from the Peninsula east to Ruyter's Kop in Mossel Bay district.

Fynbos Biome.

Notes:

This is the plant that Harvey called H. marifolium, but that name should be applied to what has hitherto been called H. umbellatum.

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Taxonomy:

Literature: 

Helichrysum capense Hilliard in Bot. J. Linn. Soc 82: 200 (1981).

 

Type:

Cape, Riversdale distr., on Kampsche Berg, 9 xii 1814, Burchell 7091 (G-DC, holo.; K, iso.).

 

Synonym(s):

Eriosphaera apiculata DC., Prodr. 6:166 (1838), non Helichrysum apiculatum (Labill.) DC. Type as above.

E. oculus-cati sensu DC., Prodr. 6:166 (1838), non (Lf) Less

Helichrysum marifolium var. ? oblongifolium DC., Prodr. 6: 186 (1838). Type: Cape, E. slopes Table Mountain, near Constantia, Ecklon 504 (G-DC).

H. marifolium sensu Harv. in F.C. 3: 230 (1865); Levyns in Adamson & Salter, Fl. Cape Penins. 782 (1950), non DC.

 

Vouchers:

Esterhuysen 17592 (BOL; PRE); Stokoe 8128 (BOL; NBG; PRE); Taylor 6587 (PRE).