Origin of name:

monticola = mountain dweller

Diagnostic characters:

White bracts
Large heads in open, branched inflorescence

Description:

Perennial herb with 1 or several leaf rosettes crowning a thick woody stock, flowering stems solitary, terminal, up to c. 300 mm high, closely leafy. Radical leaves up to 90 x 15 mm, narrowly to broadly lanceolate, upper surface glandular-pubescent and cobwebby, wool usually deciduous, lower surface commonly greyish-white woolly, occasionally only cobwebby or glandular-pubescent; cauline leaves similar but smaller and passing into inflorescence bracts, more or less imbricate. Heads heterogamous, campanulate, 15�20 mm long, 20�30 mm across the fully radiating bracts, solitary or more usually in a few- to several-headed corymb. Involucral bracts in c. 10 series, graded, loosely imbricate, much exceeding the flowers, acute, glossy, white, inner tinged pink or crimson at base inside, rarely outer bracts with a brownish pink overcast (Barberton mountains). Receptacle shortly honeycombed. Flowers 102�329, 10�26 female, 92�312 homogamous. Achenes 1.5 mm long, with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles c. 5, tips barbellate, shaft scabrid, bases not cohering.

 

Flowering between December and February.

Distribution:

Grows on stony grass slopes. Ranges from the environs of Lydenburg through the eastern highlands of Mpumalanga to Mbabane district in Swaziland, the low Drakensberg on the Mpumalanga-KwaZulu-Natal border, the NE. mountainous corner of the Free State, the KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg and its outliers, Qudeni and Karkloof ranges, East Griqualand, the mountainous parts of the Transkei and the high parts of the E. Cape as far south as Pirie near King William's Town, mostly between 1 500 and 2 700 m.

Grassland and Savanna Biomes.

Notes:

Much confused with H. adenocarpum, but most easily distinguished by its flowering stems, terminal in H. monticola, lateral in H. adenocarpum.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum monticola Hilliard in Notes R. bot. Gdn Edinb. 31: 16 (1971), Compositae in Natal 240 (1977); Compton, Fl. Swaziland 631 (1976).

 

Type:

KwaZulu-Natal, Vryheid distr., Zungwini Mt., 8 miles NE. Vryheid, c. 1 350 m, Hilliard & Burtt 5856 (NU, holo.; E; K; NH, iso.).

 

Synonym(s):

 

 

Vouchers:

Devenish 1613 (E; K; MO; NU; S); Hilliard 5179 (E; K; MO; NU; S); Hilliard & Burtt 6548 (E; K; NU; PRE).