Diagnostic characters:

Leaves narrow, margins rolled under
Bright yellow flowers
Bracts with dark brown tips
Medium sized heads
Compact dense inflorescence

Description:

Shrublet, to c. 450 mm, branches virgate, young parts greyish-white woolly-felted, leafy. Leaves mostly 10-20 x 1-2 mm, reduced and more distant on flowering twigs, linear to linear-oblong, apex acute, mucronate, base slightly narrowed, half-clasping, margins revolute, both surfaces greyish-white woolly, often becoming cobwebby above. Heads heterogamous, campanulate, c. 4 x 2-3 mm, many in compact rounded terminal clusters up to 20 mm across. Involucral bracts in 4-5 series, imbricate, graded, inner about equaling flowers, oblong, backs loosely silky-woolly, tips broad, rounded, pellucid, tawny, minutely radiating. Receptacle with fimbrils much exceeding ovaries. Flowers 12-18, 1-3 female, 9-15 homogamous. Achenes not seen, ovaries glabrous. Pappus bristles many, about equaling corolla, scabrid, barbellate above, bases cohering by patent cilia.

Flowering between August and October.

Distribution:

Endemic to the southern Cape, and recorded only from Swellendam and Riversdale divisions, on plateau and hillslopes.

Fynbos Biome.

Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum plebeium DC., Prodr. 6: 206 (1838); Harv. in F.C. 3: 249 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 287 (1910).

Type: 

Lectotype: Cape, Swellendam, Ecklon 1669 (G-DC; SAM, isolecto.).

Synonym(s): 

Gnaphalium plebeium (DC.) Sch. Bip. in Bot. Ztg 3: 172 (1845).

Vouchers: 

Acocks 22682 (K; PRE); Esterhuysen 24624 (BOL); Liebenberg 6531 (PRE); Wurts 309 (NBG).