Common names:

Toane-ea-loti (SS)

Origin of name:

montanus / -u / -um =  to do with mountains

Diagnostic characters:

Bright yellow bracts
Large heads
Compact inflorescences

Description:

Mat-forming dwarf shrub c. 100�450 mm high, often 1 m or more across, branches very short, congested, densely leafy, the leaves appearing rosetted from above, flowering stems terminal, erect, up to 200 mm long, greyish-white woolly, leafy throughout. Leaves up to 25 (�50) x 8 (�10) mm, smaller and more distant below the inflorescences, obovate, lingulate or subspathulate, apex very obtuse, base broad, half-clasping, both surfaces thickly greyish-white woolly, distinctly striped from the 3�5 parallel nerves. Heads heterogamous, hemispherical, 4�5 mm long, 5�8 mm across the radiating bracts, bases woolly, many in a compact terminal corymbose panicle. Involucral bracts in 6�7 series, graded, loosely imbricate, inner slightly exceeding flowers, tips minutely radiating, glossy, bright canary-yellow. Receptacle honeycombed. Flowers 53�133, 12�26 female, 34�112 homogamous. Achenes 0.75 mm, with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, tips barbellate or subplumose, bases with patent cilia, cohering or not.

 

Flowering between January and April.

Distribution:

Forms thick mats on cliff faces, in rocky gullies, and on rock outcrops on steep mountain slopes. On the high mountains in KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho and E. central Cape, from The Sentinel area in KwaZulu-Natal and Ficksburg in the Free State south to Sani Pass in KwaZulu-Natal, the Witteberg at Lady Grey, the Stormberg, Great Winterberg, Sneeuberg and mountains near Murraysburg (c. 32�S 24�E).

Grassland Biome.

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Notes:

Distinguished from H. splendidum by its compact habit and by its leaves, always broadest near the tip. It generally grows at higher altitudes than H. splendidum and flowers later.

Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum montanum DC., Prodr. 6: 186 (1838); Hilliard, Compositae in Natal 202 (1977).

 

Type:

Western Cape, Wittebergen, Dr�ge (G-DC, holo.; B; BM; E; K; S, iso.).

 

Synonym(s): 

Gnaphalium montanum (DC.) Sch. Bip in Bot. Ztg 3: 171 (1845), non Willd. (1804). H. splendidum var. montanum (DC.) Harv. in F.C. 3: 234 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 285 (1910).

 

Vouchers:

Esterhuysen 17350 (BOL); Hilliard & Burtt 8651 (E; K; MO; NU; PRE; S); Schelpe 541 (NU); Wright 145 (E; NH; NU).