Common names:

Everlasting, strawflower, bloubossie

Origin of name:

dasy- = thick
mallos = a fleece (Greek)

Diagnostic characters:

Plants covered by greyish wool
Large leaves, spathulate
Bright yellow bracts
Large heads in branched inflorescence

Description:

Perennial herb, rootstock stout, woody, crown very woolly from the thick rather loose brownish wool on the young leaves, stems one or several from crown, simple, erect to 400 mm, greyish-white woolly, leafy particularly below. Leaves up to 130 x 50 mm, diminishing in size upwards and passing into bracts, lower obovate to elliptic, obtuse, apiculate, contracted into a broad, clasping, petiole-like base, upper obovate to oblanceolate, subacute to acute, all thickly clothed in greyish-white wool. Heads homogamous, turbinate-campanulate, c. 9 mm long, many in small clusters corymbose-paniculately arranged. Involucral bracts in 4�5 series, subequal, loosely imbricate, about equaling flowers, bases woolly, tips very acute, lemon-yellow, not radiating. Receptacle honeycombed. Flowers 10�16. Achenes not seen, ovaries with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, about equaling corolla, scabrid, bases cohering by patent cilia, some light fusion as well.

Flowering between November and February.

Distribution:

Grows in grassland. Recorded from scattered localities in Limpopo and Gauteng (from Woodbush in the NE. to Potgietersrus and Nylstroom, the Magaliesberg and other hills near Pretoria), Nqutu and Utrecht districts in northern KwaZulu-Natal, and one record from Swaziland, unlocalized but probably Hlatikulu.

Grassland and Savanna Biomes.

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Notes:

Closely allied to H.oreophilum but easily distinguished by its larger heads and woolly indumentum.

Taxonomy:

Literature: 

Helichrysum dasymallum Hilliard in Notes R. bot. Gdn Edinb. 32: 347 (1973), Compositae in Natal 195 (1977).

Type:

Lectotype: Gauteng, Magaliesberg, Sand River, Zeyher 878 (BM; E; K; P; S, isolecto.).

Synonym(s): 

H. lanatum Harv. in F.C. 3: 233 (1865), non Schrank (1824). Type as above.

Vouchers:

Codd 6800 (K; PRE); Hutchinson 2356 (BOL; K; PRE); Rehmann 6097 (K; Z).