Origin of name:

isolepis = with equal scales

Diagnostic characters:

Leaf margins and midveins woolly
Bracts bright yellow
Compact inflorescence
Large flower heads

Description:

Much-branched, straggling perennial herb, stems branching at ground level, decumbent, rooting, then erect to c. 300 mm, simple or subsimple, loosely white-woolly, closely leafy, more distantly so under the heads. Leaves c. 10�25 x 3�5 mm, diminishing upwards, oblong-obovate to oblong, apex subacute or obtuse, mucronate, uppermost with a yellow scarious appendage, base narrowed, half-clasping, both surfaces coarsely glandular-pubescent, cobwebby initially, margins thickened, they and the midvein below white-woolly. Heads homogamous, campanulate, c. 7 x 6�7 mm, several in a spherical cluster c. 20 mm across at the branch tips. Involucral bracts in 5 series, subequal, loosely imbricate, bases webbed together with wool, oblong-elliptic, tips very obtuse, somewhat crisped, about equaling flowers, semiglossy, bright canary-yellow, radiating. Receptacle shortly honeycombed. Flowers c. 24�35. Achenes 1.5 mm long, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, tips barbellate, yellow, bases cohering by patent cilia.

Flowering in December and January.

Distribution:

Grows in stony mountain grassland, forming loose tangled clumps. Known only from the Great Winterberg and Katberg Pass in the Eastern Cape.

Thicket and Grassland Biomes.

Notes:

The habit is somewhat similar to H. montanum although the heads are very different. Leaves resemble those of certain forms of H. aureum and H. marginatum. Rarely collected.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum isolepis H. Bol. in Trans. S. Afr. phil. Soc. 18: 385 (1907).

 

Type: 

Eastern Cape, mountainside Great Winterberg, Queenstown distr., 8 iii 1900, c. 2 250 m, Galpin 2657 (K; PRE).

 

Synonym(s): 

 

 

Vouchers:

Hilliard & Burtt 10957 (E; GRA; K; M; MO; NU; PRE; S).