Origin of name:

panduratus/ -a/ -um refers to the fiddle shaped leaves

Diagnostic characters:

Leaves fiddle-shaped
Leaves bicoloured
Large heads
Open branched inflorescence
Straw-coloured bracts

Description:

A diffuse, loosely branched, soft-wooded sub-shrub, stems loosely and thinly grey-woolly, leafy, becoming pedunculoid upwards with small distant leaves passing into inflorescence bracts. Leaves up to c. 70 x 35 mm, panduriform, sessile, base broadly auricled. half-clasping, (ovate-rhomboid, petiolate in var. transvaalense), margins somewhat crisped, thinly grey-woolly above, densely so below. Heads homogamous, subglobose, c. 5�6 mm long, double that across the radiating bracts, many in loose terminal corymbose panicles. Involucral bracts in c. 5 series, graded, loosely imbricate, inner about equaling flowers, backs woolly above the stereome, tips subacute or obtuse, often erose, opaque white. Receptacle with fimbrils about equaling the ovary. Flowers 27�48 (�68 in var. transvaalense), yellow, honey-scented. Achenes c. 1 mm long, barrel-shaped, obscurely ribbed, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, scabrid, about equaling corolla, bases cohering strongly by patent cilia, lightly fused as well.

 

Flowering mainly in December and January.

Distribution:

Grows in large tangled clumps in high-rainfall areas, particularly in mixed scrub-grassland near forest margins. Ranges from the Great Kei, the southern border of the Transkei, along the coast to KwaZulu-Natal, where it has been recorded from sea level to c. 1 200 m. Also in Uganda, Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola and Gabon, but apparently absent from the old Transvaal, where it is entirely replaced by var. transvaalense.

Savanna and Thicket Biomes.

Notes:

Two varieties are recognized:

(a) var. panduratum.

(b) var. transvaalense Moeser

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum panduratum O. Hoffm. in Bull. Herbarium Boissier 2 s�r., 1: 827 (1901); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 312 (1910); Brenan in Mem. N.Y. bot. Gdn 8,5: 468 (1954); Hilliard, Compositae in Natal 191 (1977).

 

Type:

Lectotype: Congo, Kisantu, Gillet 1293 (BR).

 

Synonym(s):

H. auriculatum Less. var. panduratum Harv. in F.C. 3: 253 (1865). Lectotype: KwaZulu-Natal, near Durban and between Pietermaritzburg and Ladysmith, Gerrard 256 (K).

H. auriculatum sensu Oliv. & Hiern in F.T.A. 3: 347 (1877), non Less.

 

Vouchers:

Acocks 13961 (PRE); Flanagan 1750 (BOL; PRE; SAM); Hilliard 4071 (E; K; NH; NU); Pegler 677 (BOL); Tyson 2822 (PRE; SAM).