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Origin of name:
longinquum = long space distance, long in duration, time.
Diagnostic characters:
Leaves large and spreading flat on the ground
Description:
Perennial herb, roots fusiform, tuberous, stock small, producing slender stolons, flowering stem terminal, solitary, simple, 200�300 mm tall, white-woolly-felted, remotely bracteate. Leaves c. 4�6, spreading flat on ground, 25�30 x 18�25 mm, obovate to subrotund, slightly narrowed to a broad clasping base, apex rounded or very obtuse, upper surface with long coarse multicellular hairs, lower thinly white-felted, soon glabrescent, prominently 5-nerved, side nerves invisible; bracts few, distant, small, oblong to lanceolate, indumentum as in leaves, but wool persistent. Heads homogamous, campanulate, c. 4 x 4 mm, c. 15�25 in a compact rounded terminal cluster, bases webbed together with white wool. Involucral bracts in c. 5 series, imbricate, subequal, about equaling flowers, straw-coloured or tawny, tips slightly darker, opaque, very obtuse, erose, crisped, scarcely radiating. Receptacle with fimbrils much exceeding ovaries. Flowers 19�26, yellow. Achenes not seen, ovaries 0.75 mm long, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, scabrid, bases cohering strongly by patent cilia, sometimes lightly fused as well.
Flowering in January and February.
Distribution:
Grows on moist grassy slopes at c. 2 100 to 2 300 m. Known only from a small area of the southern KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg in Mpendhle and Underberg districts, but should be looked for particularly further south.
Grassland Biome.
Notes:
Readily recognized by its basal rosette of small spreading rounded leaves prominently 5-nerved below but lacking reticulate venation, remotely bracteate flowering stem and terminal cluster of tawny heads.
Taxonomy:
Literature:
Helichrysum longinquum Hilliard in Notes R. bot. Gdn Edinb. 40: 258 (1982).
Type:
KwaZulu-Natal, Underberg distr., Cobham Forest Station, Upper Polela Cave area, c. 2 285 m, 16 ii 1979, Hilliard & Burtt 12613 (NU holo.; E; K; PRE, iso,).
Synonym(s):
Vouchers:
Stewart 2082 (E; K; NU)