Common names:

Geel bergsewejaartjie (A)

Origin of name:

hamulosus = armed with small hooks

Diagnostic characters:

Linear, needle-like leaves white-hairy below, glabrous-glandular above
Leaf tips hooked
Medium-sized heads in sparse or dense corymbs
Straw-coloured bracts

Description:

Well-branched ericoid shrublet up to 600 mm tall, old branches nude, rough with old leaf bases, branchlets white-tomentose, closely leafy. Leaves suberect, imbricate, 6-25 x 1 mm, linear, apex acute, mucronate, hooked, base broad, sessile, margins strongly revolute, upper surface glabrous or with a few woolly hairs, lower white-tomentose. Heads homogamous, cylindric, c. 6-7 x 2 mm, many in dense terminal corymbose panicles. Involucral bracts in 5-6 series, graded, imbricate, a little shorter than the flowers, ovate-lanceolate, acute or subacute, straw-coloured, glossy, erect. Receptacle with fimbrils up to half as long as ovaries. Flowers 5-14. Achenes 1 mm long, with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, nearly equaling corolla, scabrid, bases nude, not cohering.

Flowering from December to March.

Distribution:

Widespread in the dry interior of the Cape, from Kamiesberg. Calvinia, Wuppertal and Worcester degree squares east through the Great and Little Karoo to Hanover, Graaff-Reinet and Oudtshoorn. A constituent of shrub communities.

Fynbos, Succulent Karoo, Nama Karoo and Grassland Biomes.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum hamulosum [E. Mey. ex] DC., Prodr. 6: 192 (1838); Harv. in F.C. 3: 249 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 251 (1910).

Type:

South Africa, Dr�ge 932 (G-DC, holo.).

Synonym(s):

Vouchers:

Acocks 18619 (PRE); Bolus 1052 (BM; BOL; NBG; NU); Compton 12907 (NBG); Hilliard & Burtt 10718 (E; K; MO; NU; PRE; S); Schlechter 9908 (BM; BOL; E).