Origin of name:

chryso / chrys = golden
argyr = silver

Diagnostic characters:

Bright yellow bracts
Large heads
Branched inflorescence
Long, linear grey leaves

Description:

Bushy perennial herb up to 400 mm high, old stems bare and woody below, otherwise leafy throughout, stems, leaves and base of each head enveloped in silvery, silky, skin-like indumentum. Leaves up to c. 75 (�90) x 5 (�6) mm, narrowly lanceolate, apex long-acuminate, base slightly narrowed, half-clasping. Heads heterogamous, broadly campanulate, c. 5 mm long, 8 mm across the fully radiating bracts, up to c. 15 in rather congested terminal corymbose panicles. Involucral bracts in c. 5 series, graded, closely imbricate, glossy, outer palest golden-brown or straw-coloured, inner about equaling the flowers, tips obtuse, lemon-yellow, radiating. Receptacle honeycombed. Flowers 38�75, 4�13 female, 30�62 homogamous. Achenes c. 1 mm long, broadly cylindric, with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, about equaling corolla, scabridulous, bases cohering lightly by patent cilia.

Flowers between February and April.

Distribution:

Recorded from Limpopo and Mpumalanga, from Woodbush and Haenertsburg in the North, South to the Barberton Mountains and the low Drakensberg on the Mpumalanga-KwaZulu-Natal border, western Swaziland, and the mountainous parts of northern KwaZulu-Natal.

Grassland and Savanna Biomes.

Taxonomy:

Literature: 

Helichrysum chrysargyrum Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 286 (1910); Compton, Fl. Swaziland 629 (1976); Hilliard, Compositae in Natal 206 (1977).

Type: 

Lectotype: Limpopo Province, 2330CD, Mpome, Schlechter 4728 (Z; BM; K; PRE; S, isolecto.).

Synonym(s): 

Vouchers:

Compton 25077 (NBG; PRE); Devenish 1694 (E; K; MO; NU); Hilliard & Burtt 10001 (E; K; M; MO; NU; PRE; S); Scheepers 930 (PRE).

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