Origin of name:

harveyanus / -a/ -um is named  after William Henry Harvey (1811-1866), professor of Botany at Trinity College Dublin.

Diagnostic characters:

Large heads
Open, branched inflorescence
Long lanceolate to linear leaves

Description:

Perennial herb, roots with slender tubers, rootstock slender, woody, flowering stem solitary, simple, erect to 300�750 mm, glandular, loosely cobwebby woolly, closely leafy but more distantly so above. Radical leaves often wanting, when present c. 100�300 x 5�10 mm, roughly ? wiry petiole, blade linear-lanceolate, triplinerved, margins weakly revolute, both surfaces scabrid, hairs often only near margins and above veins, often cobwebby-woolly below; cauline leaves mostly 40�170 x 1�5 mm, smaller and more distant upwards and passing into bracts, linear-lanceolate or linear, acuminate, base broad, clasping, shortly decurrent, margins strongly revolute, upper surface and midrib below scabrid, often some woolly hairs as well. Heads homogamous, campanulate, 4�5 x 3�4 mm, many in congested corymbose clusters arranged in a spreading corymbose panicle. Involucral bracts in c. 5 series, graded, loosely imbricate, about equaling flowers, not radiating, tawny, pellucid or subopaque, tips obtuse, or rarely subacute, somewhat crisped. Receptacle with fimbrils much exceeding ovaries. Flowers 17�30. Achenes 1.5 mm long, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, about equaling corolla, scabrid, bases cohering strongly by patent cilia, lightly fused as well.

 

Flowers mainly between October and January.

Distribution:

Recorded from the Bushveld in Limpopo and Gauteng and Botswana, from about Zebediela and the Loskop Dam area in the east to Sterkfontein and Lobatsi in the west. Also in Zambia.

Grassland and Savanna Biomes.

Notes:

Closely allied to H. miconiifolium, from which it is most easily distinguished by its tawny and generally obtuse involucral bracts. The two species occupy different areas.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum harveyanum Wild in Notes R. bot. Gdn Edinb. 40:255 (1982).

 

Type:

Lectotype: Transvaal, Mooye River, Burke 411 (K; TCD, isolecto.).

 

Synonym(s):

H. subulifolium Harv. in F.C. 3: 241 (1865), non F. Muell. (1863); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 267 (1910). Type as for H. harveyanum.

 

Vouchers:

Acocks 12406 (K; PRE); Codd 2269 (K; NU; PRE); Repton 2779 (PRE); Rogers 18969 (PRE).