Diagnostic characters:

Plant greyish
Heads in compact inflorescences
Light yellow bracts with dark brown tips

Description:

Subshrub up to 1.5 m tall, branches long, slender, young parts thinly greyish-white woolly, closely leafy, leaves becoming distant upwards. Leaves mostly 20-40 x 2.5-10 mm, reduced upwards, linear, linear-lanceolate or elliptic, sessile, apex subacute to acute, acuminate in uppermost leaves, mucronate, margins subrevolute, undulate in upper leaves, both surfaces thinly greyish-white woolly. Heads homogamous or heterogamous, turbinate-campanulate, c. 4 x 3 mm, many in dense globose terminal cymose corymbs. Involucral bracts in 6 series, imbricate, graded, reaching cylindric part of corolla, minutely radiating, lanceolate becoming oblong-lanceolate inwards, acute to obtuse, backs woolly, tips glabrous, subopaque, deep straw-yellow sometimes tinged light golden brown. Receptacle smooth. Flowers 19-32, 0-5 female (staminodes often present), 15-32 homogamous. Achenes not seen, ovaries with duplex hairs, not myxogenic. Pappus bristles many, scabrid, bases cohering by patent cilia.

Flowering between July and October, mainly in August and September.

Distribution:

On stony slopes and flats, in dry scrub. Apparently confined to the W. and SW. Cape, and ranging from the Richtersveld, just south of the Orange River, through Hondeklipbaai, Kamiesberg, Vanrhynsdorp, Calvinia, Clanwilliam, Wuppertal, Sutherland and Worcester degree squares.

Fynbos and Succulent Karoo Biomes.

Notes:

Much confused with H. tricostatum.

Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum hebelepis DC., Prodr. 6: 186 (1838); Harv. in F.C. 3: 235 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 291 (1910) excl. syn.

Type:

Little Namaqualand, Dr�ge 5753, excluding right-hand piece on sheet (G-DC).

Synonym(s): 

Gnaphalium hebelepis (DC.) Sch. Bip. in Bot. Ztg 3: 171 (1845).

H. hebelepis var. angustius DC., Prodr. 6: 187 (1838). Lectotype: Clanwilliam div., Olifants River and Villa Brakfontein, Ecklon 161 (G-DC).

Vouchers: 

Acocks 19404 (K; PRE); Compton 5101 (BOL; NBG); Esterhuysen 5762 (BOL); MacOwan 1887 (K; SAM); Nordenstam 1011 (NU; S).

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