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Origin of name:
Diagnostic characters:
Large leaves with petioleLarge inflorescences, branched on long stalkBrownish bracts
Description:
Perennial herb, stock slender (c. 4 mm diam.), probably rhizomatous, flowering stem erect to c. 750 mm, solitary or paired, simple, glandular-hairy, thinly woolly as well, leafy in lower part, becoming pedunculoid upwards. Radical leaves few, 130�250 x 25�50 mm, roughly half the length petiolar, blade broadly elliptic, apex acute, base suddenly then gradually narrowed into the petiolar part, expanded and clasping below, both surfaces glandular-pilose, lower thinly white-woolly as well, 5-nerved; cauline leaves similar, rapidly becoming smaller, narrower and sessile, and passing into a few distant, lanceolate-acuminate bracts. Heads homogamous, cylindric-campanulate, 4 x 3 mm, many in crowded clusters webbed together with wool, forming a very compact corymbose compound head. Involucral bracts in c. 4 series, subequal, closely imbricate, equaling the flowers, not radiating, subpellucid, straw-coloured or pale golden-brown. Receptacle with large fimbrils exceeding the ovaries. Flowers c. 9�13. Achenes not seen, ovaries glabrous. Pappus bristles many, scabrid, bases cohering by patent cilia, sometimes light fusion as well.
Flowering between November and February.
Distribution:
On moist rocky grassy or scrubby slopes. Recorded only from Butha Buthe district in Lesotho and Mpendhle and Underberg districts in KwaZulu-Natal, between c. 1 800 and 3 000 m above sea level.
Grassland Biome.
Notes:
Easily overlooked, despite its size, because it somewhat resembles the common H. nudifolium; readily distinguished, however, by its soft-textured leaves and small heads with brownish involucral bracts.
Taxonomy:
Literature:
Helichrysum qathlambanum Hilliard in Notes R. bot. Gdn Edinb. 40: 264 (1982).
Type:
KwaZulu-Natal, Underberg distr., Garden Castle Forest Reserve, valley beyond Forester's house, in scrub on steep stony slope, 1 950 m, 4 xi 1980, Hilliard & Burtt 13783 (NU, holo.; E, iso.).
Synonym(s):
Vouchers:
Coetzee 430(NBG); Lubke 246 (PRE).