Origin of name:

revolutum = with margins rolled back

Diagnostic characters:

Creamy bracts
Open branched inflorescences
Stipules
Leaves in tufts (a long leaf supporting a cluster of shorter leaves)

Description:

Bushy half-shrub up to 2 m tall, stems woody, young ones thinly greyish-white woolly, closely leafy. Leaves often with axillary tufts of reduced leaves, main stem leaves 10-40 x 1-5 mm, diminishing slightly upwards, erect or spreading, linear, linear-lanceolate to lanceolate, apex acute, mucronate, base somewhat eared, slightly decurrent, margins revolute, upper surface thinly greyish-white woolly, often glabrescent, irregularly wrinkled, often tuberculate, lower persistently greyish-white woolly. Heads heterogamous, campanulate, c. 4.5-5 x 4 mm, few to many in terminal compact corymbose panicles. Involucral bracts in 4-5 series, imbricate, graded, inner equaling flowers, oblong, tips rounded, not radiating, pellucid, glossy, pale to deep straw-coloured. Receptacle shortly toothed. Flowers 20-37, (1-) 3-8 female, 17-32 homogamous. Achenes 1 mm, barrel-shaped, with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, about equaling corolla, barbellate, bases cohering strongly by patent cilia.

Flowers between July and October.

Distribution:

One record from the Aurusberge in southern Namibia, then widespread in the western Cape from Namaqualand south through Vanrhynsdorp, Calvinia, Clanwilliam, Sutherland, Montagu, Worcester, Cape Town and Simonstown degree squares, from near sea level to c. 900 m, in rocky or sandy places.

Fynbos and Succulent Karoo Biomes.

Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum revolutum (Thunb.) Less., Syn. Comp. 305 (1832); DC., Prodr. 6: 206 (1838); Harv. in F.C. 3: 252 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 282 (1910); Levyns in Adamson & Salter, Fl. Cape Penins. 784 (1950); Merxm. & Roessl. in Mitt. bot. StSamml., M�nch. 15: 367 (1979).

 

Type:

Lectotype: Cape of Good Hope, Thunberg (sheet 19245, UPS).

 

Synonym(s): 

Gnaphalium revolutum Thunb., Prodr. 150 (1800), Fl. Cap. 652 (1823).

Helichrysum leiolepis DC., Prodr. 6: 187 (1838). Gnaphalium leiolepis (DC.) Sch. Bip. in Bot. Ztg 3: 171 (1845). Type: Cape, Clanwilliam div., Olifants River and at Villa Brakfontein, Ecklon (G-DC, holo.; S, iso.).

 

Vouchers: 

Acocks 19407 (M; PRE); Barker 9604 (NBG); Compton 9387 (NBG); Esterhuysen 23693 (PRE); Nordenstam 1339 (M; NU).

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