Origin of name:

Named after the collector of the type specimen, Walter Jacques Haygarth (1862-1950). He was the adopted son of Medley Wood and who collected in KwaZulu-Natal.

Diagnostic characters:

Mat-forming
Large, solitary heads

Description:

Diffuse, prostrate, mat-forming subshrub, main stems bare, gnarled, up to c. 5 mm diam., ultimate branches very slender (c. 1 mm diam.), stoloniferous, leafy, producing dwarf side shoots with closely rosetted leaves. Rosette leaves up to 10 x 5 mm, obovate; cauline leaves c. 6 x 3 mm, imbricate, subspathulate, conduplicate, tips slightly recurved, all silvery sericeous. Heads homogamous, campanulate, c. 15 mm long, 20 mm across the fully radiating bracts, sessile, solitary at the tips of the dwarf shoots. Involucral bracts in c. 8 series, graded, closely imbricate, outer glossy crimson overlaid brown, much shorter and broader than inner, inner much exceeding flowers, white streaked crimson particularly below, opaque. Receptacle smooth. Flowers c. 50�91, yellow. Achenes 1.75 mm long, ellipsoid, with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, scabrid, bases with patent cilia scarcely cohering.

 

Flowering from about December to February.

Distribution:

Recorded only from the two type localities, but not found again on Van Reenen's pass, only c. 10 km in a straight line from Rensburg's Kop, between Van Reenen and Harrismith in the Free State. Grows on very broken weathered basalt cliffs at c. 2 225 m on Rensburg's Kop.

Grassland Biome.

Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum haygarthii H. Bol. in Trans. S. Afr. phil. Soc. 18: 382 (1907); Hilliard, Compositae in Natal 221 (1977).

 

Type: 

Free State, Harrismith distr., Rensburg's Kop, 6 000�7 000 ft., Haygarth in herbarium Wood 9727 (BOL, holo.; NH; P; PRE, iso.).

 

Synonym(s):

M. multirosulatum O. Hoffm. & Muschl. in Annln naturh. Mus. Wien 24: 318 (1910). Type: Natal, Van Reenen's Pass, Krook, Pl. Penther. no. 1440 (W, holo.).

 

Vouchers:

Hilliard 4986(E; K; NH; NU; PRE; S).

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