Origin of name:

leptorhizus = with slender rhizome

Diagnostic characters:

Minute annual plant
Small heads

Description:

Delicate annual herb c. 60 mm tall, stems several from the base, weakly erect, filiform, simple below, weakly branched above, thinly and loosely greyish-white woolly, glabrescent, distantly leafy. Leaves 5-15 x 2.5-4 mm, lower oblanceolate, much narrowed to the base, becoming spathulate to elliptic upwards, apex sub-acute to obtuse, apiculate, both surfaces thinly greyish white-woolly cobwebby. Heads heterogamous, campanulate, c. 3 x 1.5-2 mm, 2 or 3 together on minute branchlets in the upper leaf axils and at the branchlet tips, shortly pedunculate. Involucral bracts in c. 5 series, graded, outer pale golden-brown, pellucid, inner about equaling flowers, brown flushed crimson, tips obtuse, more or less opaque whitish, not radiating. Receptacle scarcely honeycombed. Flowers c. 19-22, 10-11 female, 9-11 homogamous. Achenes 0.75 mm long, with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles about equaling corolla, scabrid, bases with minute patent cilia, not cohering.

Distribution:

Succulent Karoo Biome.

Notes:

Collected by Dr�ge in northern Namaqualand and by Schlechter at Eenkokerboom, south of Garies, in September 1897, otherwise unknown.

top

Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum leptorhizum DC., Prodr. 6: 169 (1838); Harv. in F.C. 3: 214 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 296 (1910).

 

Type: 

Little Namaqualand, Springbok distr., between Kaus Mountains and Gariep, Dr�ge (G-DC, holo.; K; P, iso.).

 

Synonym(s):

Gnaphalium leptorhizum (DC.) Sch. Bip. in Bot. Ztg 3: 169 (1845).

 

Vouchers: 

Schlechter 11055 (BM; BOL; G; K; PRE).