Origin of name:

panduratus/ -a/ -um refers to the fiddle shaped leaves
transvaalense = from former Transvaal (MP, GP, LP, and most of NW)

Diagnostic characters:

Bicoloured fiddle-shaped leaves
Large heads
Compact branched inflorescences
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 between August and November, mainly August to October.

Distribution:

Grows on forest margins, but also favours rocky, bushy places. H. panduratum var. transvaalense ranges from the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe to the Soutpansberg, through the eastern highlands of the Transvaal and western Swaziland to northern KwaZulu-Natal, where it has been recorded from Ngome and near Louwsburg; Ngome is the only place in South Africa where the two varieties are known to be sympatric.

Savanna and Thicket Biomes.

Notes:

Two varieties are recognized:

(a) var. panduratum.

(b) var. transvaalense Moeser

Similar in habit and general facies to var. panduratum but differing in its ovate-rhomboid to elliptic leaves tapering into a distinct petiole minutely eared at the base.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum panduratum O. Hoffm.var. transvaalense Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 312 (1910); Hilliard, Compositae in Natal 637 (1977).

 

Type:

Mpumalanga, Shilouvane, Aug. 1899, Junod 566 (Z, holo.; G; K; PRE, iso.).

 

Synonym(s):

 

 

Vouchers:

Codd 1682 (NU; PRE); Compton 27994 (NBG; PRE); Moss 15463 (BM; PRE); Scheepers 1172 (G; PRE).