Origin of name:

cinctus = encircled, girdled, enclosed

Diagnostic characters:

Woody
White-woolly plant
Small heads in dense clusters surrounded by leaves
Straw-yellow bracts

Description:

Dwarf shrublet branching from the base, taproot woody, deeply penetrative, stems up to 200 mm long, nude at the base and rooting there, laxly branched above, thinly white-felted, leafy throughout. Leaves mostly 5-20 x 1.5-5 mm, diminishing upwards, spathulate-oblong to oblong, apex rounded, base narrowed, half-clasping, both surfaces thickly white woolly-felted. Heads homogamous, cylindric, c. 5 x 3 mm several clustered in glomerules 10-15 mm across at the branch tips, surrounded by leaves. Involucre surrounded by 2-3 reduced leaves webbed together with wool, bracts  in 3-4 series, soon caducous, subequal, equaling flowers, loosely imbricate, not radiating, pale straw-coloured to light golden-brown, obtuse, apiculate, translucent, tips opaque or subopaque. Receptacle nearly smooth. Flowers 11-17. Achenes 0.75 mm long, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, delicate, scabrid, equaling corolla, bases cohering lightly by patent cilia.

Flowering between December and March.

Distribution:

Recorded along the E. Cape coast from Port Alfred to Kei Mouth, growing on bare, well compacted and often stony sand dunes and slopes on the foreshore.

Grassland, Savanna and Thicket Biomes.

Notes:

Confused in herbaria with Vellereophyton vellereum, which also grows along the coast, but in damp dune slacks or in salt marshes at the river mouths, and is easily distinguished by its heterogamous heads with very different white-tipped involucral bracts.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum praecintum Klatt in Bull. Herbarium Boissier 4: 838 (1896); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 299 (1910).

Type: 

Cape, Kei Mouth, 7 i 1895, Schlechter 6199 (Z, holo.; BM (fragment); BOL; PRE, iso.).

Synonym(s):

H. rogersii S. Moore in J. Bot., Lond. 46: 41 (1908); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 287 (1910). Type Cape, Port Alfred, Rogers 944 (BM, holo.).

Vouchers:

Batten 324 (E; K; M; MO; NU; S); Flanagan 335 (PRE; SAM); Hilliard & Burtt 11108 (E; K; NU; S); Tyson s.n., Kowie (NU; PRE; SAM).