Common names:

Gold-and-silver everlasting

Origin of name:

cochleariforme = concave like a spoon, spoon-like, cochlear in aestivation

Diagnostic characters:

Narrow grey leaves
Medium-sized heads
Solitary heads
Brown bracts, with inner ones white-tipped and spreading

Description:

Bushy half-shrub 50-200 mm high, woody at the base and much branched there, branches erect or spreading, simple or forked, often with dwarf axillary shoots, loosely grey-woolly, leafy throughout. Leaves mostly 5-30 x 2-5 mm. diminishing slightly upwards, spathulate to oblong- or linear-spathulate, apex obtuse, apiculate, base narrowed, half-clasping, both surfaces grey-woolly. Heads heterogamous, subglobose, c. 5-7 x 5-8 mm, solitary or few together at the tips of the twiglets, these corymbose-paniculately arranged. Involucral bracts in 6-8 series, loosely imbricate, graded, inner slightly exceeding flowers, all bracts obtuse, concave, smooth, reddish- or golden-brown, innermost often tipped opaque milk-white, minutely radiating. Receptacle shortly honeycombed. Flowers 56-120, 13-26 female, 45-102 homogamous. Achenes 0.75 mm long, glabrous or with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, scabrid, about equaling corolla, bases nude, not cohering.

Flowering between September and December, chiefly in October.

Distribution:

Grows in open sandy places in coastal scrub or sandy hollows between the dunes.  Endemic to the SW. and S. Cape, from the sand flats about Piquetberg south and then east along the coast to the Gouritz River, Mossel Bay district.

Fynbos Biome.

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Notes:

A very distinctive species, easily recognized by its subglobose heads with golden-brown, concave bracts, the innermost bracts often tipped opaque white and minutely radiating.

Taxonomy:

Literature: 

Helichrysum cochleariforme DC., Prodr. 6: 185 (1838); Hilliard & Burtt in Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 82: 262 (1981).

 

Type: 

Cape, Mossel Bay, dry branch of Gouritz River, 6 Nov. 1814, Burchell 6491 (G-DC, holo.; BOL; K, iso.).

 

Synonym(s):

Gnaphalium cochleariforme (DC.) Sch. Bip in Bot. Ztg 3: 171 (1845).

G. imbricatum L., Sp. Pl. 855 (1753). Helichrysum imbricatum (L.) Less., Syn. Comp. 279 (1832), non (L.) Thunb. (1823); Harv. in F.C. 3: 221 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 293 (1910). Lectotype: specimen illustrated in Burm.; Rar. Afr. Pl. t. 80, fig. 2 (G).

G. discolorum sensu Thunb., Prodr. 149 (1800), non L.

Helichrysum stellatum var. globiferum Harv. in F.C. 3: 221 (1865). Type: Cape, Breede River, Port Beaufort, Mundt 21 (TCD, holo.; K, iso.).

 

Vouchers: 

Acocks 15207 (K; PRE); Compton 10216 (NBG); Esterhuysen 19566 (BOL); Oliver 4054 (K; PRE); Taylor 4281 (PRE).