Origin of name:

pulchellum = pretty and small, or somewhat attractive

Diagnostic characters:

Golden-brown bracts
Medium-sized heads, solitary or in small clusters

Description:

Perennial herb 50-200 mm tall, much branched from the base and woody there, stems simple or subsimple branching above into the compound inflorescence, grey-woolly, leafy. Leaves up to 22 x 5 mm, diminishing upwards, linear, linear-oblong, or lanceolate, acute or subacute, mucronate, base broad, half-clasping, often auriculate, margins crisped undulate, both surfaces grey-woolly or cobwebby, sometimes glabrescent, older leaves without hairs and then very densely glandular. Heads heterogamous, campanulate, c. 4-5 x 3-4 mm, solitary or few in terminal clusters, these arranged in a leafy corymbose panicle. Involucral bracts in c. 6-7 series, graded, loosely imbricate, innermost just overtopping flowers, all tips subacute to obtuse, somewhat concave, light golden-brown, innermost minutely radiating, lobes with glands on outer surface. Receptacle shortly honeycombed. Flowers 40-66, 6-13 female, 30-55 homogamous. Achenes not seen, ovaries glabrous, or rarely with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, tips shortly subplumose or barbellate, bases nude, not cohering.

Flowering between September and November.

Distribution:

Ranges from the Richtersveld south of the Orange River through Namaqualand to Koo and Karoopoort near Ceres and Pieter Meintjies near Laingsburg, in dry sandy or rocky places.

Fynbos, Succulent Karoo and Nama Karoo Biomes.

Notes:

Sometimes confused with H. cylindriflorum but distinguished by its involucral bracts, all with broad golden-brown subpellucid tips, not squarrose as in H. cylindriflorum (though the innermost are minutely radiating), and the consistently larger number of flowers in the head.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum pulchellum DC., Prodr. 6: 190 (1838); Harv. in F.C. 3: 220 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 293 (1910); Hilliard & Burtt in Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 82: 262 (1981).

 

Type: 

Cape, Ceres div., between Hex River Mountains and Warm Bokkeveld, Sept., Dr�ge 614 (G-DC, holo.; K; S, iso.).

 

Synonym(s):

H. cochleariforme sensu Harv. in F.C. 3: 220 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 293 (1910), non DC.

H. concinnum N.E. Br. in Kew Bull. 1897: 269 (1897). Type: Namaqualand, near Ezel's Fontein and Rood Berg, 3 500�4 000 ft, Dr�ge (K, holo.).

 

Vouchers:

Acocks 14800 (K; PRE); Nordenstam 1642 (S); Rogers 17894 (K; PRE; Z); Salter 1582 (BM; BOL; K); Scully 1183 (BM; BOL; E; K; SAM).