Origin of name:

patulum = somewhat spreading

Diagnostic characters:

Medium-sized heads
Compact inflorescence
Cream bracts
Small hairy leaves

Description:

Straggling well-branched subshrub up to 1 m tall, branches virgate, white-woolly, closely leafy becoming nude and pedunculoid below the inflorescence. Leaves mostly 6�20 x 2�12 mm, panduriform, upper part broadly elliptic to suborbicular, abruptly contracted about the middle, apex very obtuse, base broad, ear-clasping, margins crisped-undulate, both surfaces greyish-white woolly, upper less densely so. Heads homogamous, campanulate to subglobose, 4�5 x 3�5 mm, many in small corymbose clusters often corymbose-paniculately arranged. Involucral bracts in 5 series, graded, loosely imbricate, inner about equaling flowers, tips not radiating, concave, very obtuse, more or less undulate-crisped, opaque creamy white to pale primrose yellow, or rosy. Receptacle with fimbrils equaling ovaries. Flowers 14�30. Achenes 0.75 mm long, barrel-shaped, c. 8-ribbed, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, a little shorter than corolla, scabrid, bases cohering strongly by patent cilia.

 

Flowers between September and February, mainly in December and January.

Distribution:

Grows in shrub communities on coastal dunes and inland on S. facing mountain slopes up to c. 600 m above sea level. Confined to the SW. and S. Cape, from the Peninsula, Cape Flats and Stellenbosch along the coast to Groot Brak River, Mossel Bay.

Fynbos Biome.

Notes:

Often confused with H. pandurifolium, from which it is easily distinguished by its concave obtuse involucral bracts; distinguished from H. petiolare by its crisped-undulate leaf margins.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum patulum (L.) D. Don in Loudon, Hort. Brit. 341 (1830); Hilliard & Burtt in Notes R. Bot. Gdn Edinb. 32: 355 (1973).

 

Type:

Cape of Good Hope, Gnaphalium no. 15 (Herbarium Cliff. BM, holo.).

 

Synonym(s):

Gnaphalium patulum L., Sp. Pl. 855 (1753).

G. divaricatum Berg., Descr. Pl. Cap. 250 (1767). Type: Cape, Ekeberg (STB, holo.).

G. spatulatum Burm. f., Prodr. Fl. Cap. 25 (1768); Breyn., Prodr. t. 18 fig. 3 (1739). Type: Cape of Good Hope, Breynius (W).

G. auriculatum Lam., Encycl. 2: 754 (1788), non Helichrysum auriculatum Less. Type: Cape of Good Hope (P-LAM).

Helichrysum crispum var. subrufescens DC., Prodr. 6: 208 (1838). Types: ex herbarium De la Roche (G-DC); spec, labeled Gnaphalium spatulatum Breyn. (G-DC). [These excluded from IDC microfiche].

H. crispum var. citrinum Harv. in F.C. 3: 253 (1865). Lectotype: Cape Flats, Wallich (BM).

Helichrysum crispum sensu Less., Syn. Comp. 310 (1832); DC., Prodr. 6: 208 (1838); Harv. in F.C. 3: 253 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 311 (1910); Levyns in Adamson & Salter, Fl. Cape Penins. 784 (1950); non (L.) D. Don.

 

Vouchers: 

Acocks 21553 (PRE); Bolus 4420 (BOL); Compton 8117 (NBG); Schlechter 9777 (E); Taylor 7024 (PRE).