Origin of name:

ruderale = growing among rubbish

Diagnostic characters:

Bright yellow bracts
Large solitary heads in openly branched inflorescence
Leaf margins woolly

Description:

Biennial herb, aromatic when fresh, up to c. 1 m tall, stem stout, base up to 10 mm diam., simple below the inflorescence, glandular-setose, the uppermost part and the inflorescence branches thinly white-woolly as well, leafy throughout. Radical leaves wanting at flowering; cauline leaves up to 180 x 65 mm, decreasing in size upwards, elliptic or lanceolate-elliptic, uppermost lanceolate, apex acute to acuminate, apiculate, base broad, cordate-clasping, all but the uppermost decurrent in long or short wings, both surfaces glandular-setose, margins often white-woolly as well. Heads heterogamous, depressed-globose, c. (22�) 25�32 mm across the radiating bracts, many in a large corymbose panicle, the branches obliquely ascending. Involucral bracts in c. 9 series, graded, imbricate, much exceeding flowers, radiating, glossy, bright yellow. Receptacle honeycombed. Flowers 811�1053, 121�226 female, 681�754 homogamous, yellow. Achenes c. 1 mm long, barrel-shaped, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, tips barbellate, bases with patent cilia, cohering or not.

Flowering in September and October, fading in November.

Distribution:

A weed, often forming dense stands along roadsides and in old fields. Recorded only from KwaZulu-Natal, from Eshowe, Mtunzini and Umvoti districts in the north to Port Shepstone district in the south, from near sea level to c. 1 050 m.

Grassland, Thicket and Savanna Biomes.

Notes:

Closely allied to H. cooperi and not easy to distinguish in the herbarium. The persistent white wool on the inflorescence branches to well below the first forking is a useful character to distinguish H. ruderale; white wool is usually wanting in H. cooperi except sometimes immediately below the heads. H. ruderale flowers in spring, H. cooperi in summer. In the field, the obliquely-ascending inflorescence branches of H. ruderale immediately distinguish it from H. cooperi with inflorescence branches wide-spreading to nearly horizontal.

A specimen in PRE (Kioch s.n., Boshoff�s Road Siding, Pietermaritzburg) is annotated 'Fibre produced from stems' and the fibre sample mounted on the sheet seems to be excellent.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum ruderale Hilliard & Burtt in Notes R. bot. Gdn Edinb. 34: 82 (1975); Hilliard, Compositae in Natal 244 (1977).

 

Type: 

KwaZulu-Natal, Pinetown distr., Everton, Eskotene, c. 600 m, Hilliard & Burtt 7216 (NU, holo.; E; K; PRE, iso.).

 

Synonym(s):

 

 

Vouchers:

Rogers 24413 (PRE); Strey 6934 (NU; PRE); Wood 12491 (NH; NU).