Common names:

Edelweiss

Origin of name:

rosum/ -as = pink
niveum = snow white or growing near snow

Diagnostic characters:

Very large heads
White/pink bracts
Plants covered with white wool

Description:

Bushy herb, flowering when young and then single-stemmed, but main stem can become woody and nearly 10 mm in diam., taproot woody, stems c. 30�200 mm long, wiry, simple or branched, erect or decumbent, copiously white cobwebby-woolly, leafy. Leaves mostly 15�25 (�45) x 5�15 (�20) mm, diminishing slightly upwards, obovate or ovate, very obtuse, base narrowed, petiole-like in larger leaves, both surfaces copiously white cobwebby-woolly. Heads homogamous, campanulate, c. 7�10 x 8 mm, c. 15 mm across the radiating bracts, solitary or several clustered at the branch tips surrounded by green bracts webbed to outer involucral bracts. Involucral bracts in c. 5 series, subequal, loosely imbricate, exceeding flowers, silvery, pellucid, tips radiating, subacute, opaque white, inner often light crimson, fading to pink then white. Receptacle nearly smooth. Flowers (32�) 43�77, yellow, tipped pink. Achenes 1 mm, elliptic, with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, scabrid, bases nude, not cohering.

 

Possibly flowering in any month, but most records between May and July.

Distribution:

Grows in sandy or gravelly watercourses, around rocks, or in the crevices of rocks. A most elegant plant known only from the Kaokoveld and Namib Deserts of southernmost Angola and Namibia and south to Rostock and Rehoboth degree squares.

Desert Biome.

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Notes:

Allied to H. gariepinum from which it is distinguished by its homogamous heads; also, the two species are allopatric, H. gariepinum occurring only in the southern part of Namibia and extending into the semi-desert areas of the northern Cape. See also under H. marlothianum.

Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum roseo-niveum Marloth & O. Hoffm.in Bot. Jb. 10: 275 (1888); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 304 (1910); Merxm., F.S.W.A. 39: 97 (1967).

 

Type: 

Namibia [Haigamkab] Hykamkab and Husab, Marloth 1212 (K; PRE; SAM; fragment BOL, iso.).

 

Synonym(s):

 

 

Vouchers:

Galpin & Pearson 7658 (K; PRE; SAM); Hall 382 (NBG); Nordenstam & Lundgren 846 (E; S); De Winter & Leistner 5792 (K; M; PRE; WIND).