Diagnostic characters:

Long linear leaves, bi-coloured, whitish below
Upper leaves clasping the stems for about half their length
Leaves larger at base decrease in length upwards
Compact head
Brown-yellow bracts

Description:

Mat-forming perennial herb, main stems stoloniferous, rooting and branching freely, producing numerous leaf rosettes, flowering stems decumbent then erect, 300-400 mm long, simple, silvery sericeous, appressed-leafy. Radical leaves rosetted, mostly 40-100 x 3-10 mm, linear-lanceolate, apex obtuse or subacute, base broad, clasping, upper surface with thin 'tissue-paper' indumentum, lower white silky-felted; cauline leaves much reduced, c. 10-30 x 1.5-3 mm, degenerating upwards into bracts, linear or linear-lanceolate, acute to acuminate, enveloped in silky indumentum webbed to the stem, only leaf tips free. Heads homogamous, c. 5 x 2 mm, many lightly webbed together in a very congested, terminal, cymose cluster c. 15-25 mm across. Involucral bracts in c. 3 series, loosely imbricate, outer shorter, pellucid, tips light brown, inner subequal, equaling flowers, tips very obtuse, canary-yellow, not radiating. Receptacle shortly honeycombed. Flowers 7-10. Achenes 1 mm long, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, shortly plumose in upper half, bases nude, not cohering.

Flowering in May.

Distribution:

Forms large mats on damp earth banks and tussocks at the marshy sources of streams. Recorded from Mpumalanga and Fort Nottingham Commonage in KwaZulu-Natal and the top of Mt Insizwa, Mt Ayliff district, Transkei.

Grassland and Savanna Biomes.

Taxonomy:

Literature: 

Helichrysum ephelos Hilliard in Notes R. bot. Gdn Edinb. 40: 254 (1982).

Type:

KwaZulu-Natal, Lion's River distr., Fort Nottingham Commonage, c. 1675 m, 4 v 1977, Hilliard & Burtt 10329 (NU, holo.; E; K; MO; PRE; S, iso.).

Synonym(s): 

Vouchers:

Hilliard & Burtt 7307 (E; NU); Hilliard & Burtt 18366 (PRE).