Origin of name:

lesliei is named after Leslie Edward Wostall Codd (1908� ) who was director of the Botanical Research Institute for 10 years (1963�1973) and collected more than 10 000 plants in southern Africa.

Diagnostic characters:

Large solitary heads
Bright yellow bracts
Woolly leaves

Description:

Soft-wooded subshrub, stock stout, up to 20 mm diam., woody, crowned with one or several leaf rosettes, flowering stems several, lateral to the rosettes, erect, up to 600 mm, simple below the compound inflorescence, thickly and loosely white woolly, closely leafy. Radical leaves up to 150 x 40 mm, oblong-lanceolate, apex subacute, margins somewhat undulate; cauline leaves mostly 35�50 x (15�) 20�40 mm, smaller on the inflorescence branches, ovate or broadly lanceolate, apex very obtuse to subacute, base broad, cordate-clasping, all leaves with both surfaces loosely greyish-white woolly. Heads heterogamous, 10�14 mm long, 20�30 mm across the radiating bracts, depressed-globose, 2 to several in a leafy open corymbose panicle. Involucral bracts in c. 9 series, graded, imbricate, inner much exceeding the flowers, glossy, bright yellow, outer overlaid palest brown outside. Receptacle shortly honeycombed. Flowers c. 700�1 000, 140 female, 560�830 homogamous. Achenes c. 1 mm long, barrel-shaped, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, tips barbellate, shaft scabrid, bases with minute patent cilia, cohering or not.

Flowers between January and April.

Distribution:

Possibly always on quartzites. Recorded from Lydenburg, Belfast and Barberton districts, and on hills (Swaziland System) 17 miles N of Johannesburg.

Grassland and Savanna Biomes.

Notes:

The broad, cordate-clasping loosely woolly grey cauline leaves and the very open and leafy inflorescence are characteristic.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum lesliei Hilliard in Notes R. bot. Gdn Edinb. 40: 257 (1982).

 

Type:

Mpumalanga, Lydenburg distr., 16 miles S. of Lydenburg, Kemp's Heights, 6 200 ft, 21 i 1954, Codd 8313 (PRE, holo.; K, iso.).

 

Synonym(s):

 

 

Vouchers:

Hilliard & Burtt 14171 (E; K; M; MO; NU; PRE; S); Jacobsen 4831 (PRE); Richardson 12 (E; K; NU).