Origin of name:

panduratus/ -a/ -um = fiddle shape refers to the leaves

Diagnostic characters:

Large heads
Compact branched inflorescences
Off-white / cream bracts

Description:

A loosely branched, soft-wooded shrub, branches long, slender, thinly grey-woolly, leafy becoming pedunculoid and distantly bracteate below the inflorescence. Leaves mostly 8�16 x 8�10 mm, orbicular to broadly ovate abruptly narrowed to a broad petiole-like ear-clasping base, margins markedly crisped-undulate, both surfaces grey-woolly. Heads homogamous, broadly campanulate, c. 5�8 x 6�10 (�14) mm when fully radiating, few to many in loose terminal corymbose panicles. Involucral bracts in c. 6 series, graded, loosely imbricate, outer sometimes palest brown, inner exceeding the flowers, backs loosely woolly above stereome, radiating, tips acute or subacute, somewhat crisped, opaque milk-white, sometimes suffused with rose. Receptacle with fimbrils exceeding ovaries. Flowers 12�39, yellow. Achenes 0.75 mm, barrel-shaped, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, scabrid, about equaling corolla, bases cohering strongly by patent cilia.

 

Flowers between September and January, but mainly from October to December.

Distribution:

Ranges from the Cape Peninsula, Bainskloof and Waboom's River through the coastal districts to the Tsitsikama and Kouga Mountains, on hill and mountain slopes in sandy or rocky places, from near sea level to c. 1 500 m.

Fynbos Biome.

Notes:

Can be confused with both H. patulum and H. petiolare but distinguished by its more pointed involucral bracts.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum pandurifolium Schrank in Denkschr. K. Akad. Wiss. M�nch. 8: 169 (1824).

 

Type: 

Cape of Good Hope, Brehm s.n. (M, holo.).

 

Synonym(s): 

Gnaphalium auriculatum Thunb., Prodr. 151 (1800), Fl. Cap. 657 (1823), non Lam. 1788. Helichrysum auriculatum Less., Syn. Comp. 311 (1832); DC., Prodr. 6: 209 (1838); Harv. in F.C. 3: 253 (1865) excl. var.panduratum Harv.; Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 311 (1910); Levyns in Adamson & Salter, Fl. Cape Penins. 785 (1950). Type: Cape, Table Mountain, Thunberg (sheet 19103, UPS, holo.).

H. auriculatum var. oblongifolium DC., Prodr. 6: 209 (1838). Type: Cape, Table Mtn, Dr�ge 295 (G-DC, holo.; BM, iso.).

 

Vouchers: 

Bolus 3315 (BOL; SAM); Esterhuysen 387 (BOL; PRE); Hafstr�m & Acocks 1608 (PRE); Taylor 4470 (PRE).