Origin of name:

scrabi = rough, somewhat rough

Diagnostic characters:

Woody plant
Leaves glandular, often folded, margins wavy
Golden-brown bracts
Heads in small clusters

Description:

Well-branched shrub up to 1.5 m tall, branches tangled, young stems thinly white-woolly, glandular, leafy. Leaves often with axillary tufts of reduced leaves, main stem leaves 6-14 x 2-4 mm, diminishing slightly upwards, spreading, oblong, oblong-lanceolate or oblanceolate, apex acute, stoutly mucronate, base somewhat eared, slightly decurrent, margins revolute, bluntly repand, undulate, both surfaces with rough coarse glandular hairs, sometimes cobwebby as well. Heads heterogamous, campanulate, 4-5 x 3-4 mm, few to several in terminal compact corymbose panicles. Involucral bracts in 4-5 series, imbricate, graded, inner about equaling flowers, oblong, tips rounded, not radiating, pellucid, glossy, straw-coloured. Receptacle with fimbrils about equaling ovaries. Flowers 17-24, 4-6 female, 14-18 homogamous. Achenes not seen, ovaries with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, nearly equaling corolla, barbellate, bases cohering by patent cilia.

Flowering between August and December, but mainly in September.

Distribution:

Grows on rocky mountain slopes, in karroid scrub. Ranging from Springbok in Namaqualand south to Calvinia, Clanwilliam, and Wuppertal degree squares, and reaching Ceres.

Fynbos and Succulent Karoo Biomes.

Notes:

Easily recognized by its more or less oblong leaves with revolute repand margins and rough glandular hairs.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum scabrum Less., Syn. Comp. 312 (1832), non DC.; Harv. in F.C. 3: 252 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 283 (1910).

 

Type: 

Cape of Good Hope, Thunberg (sheet 19250, UPS, holo.).

 

Synonym(s):

Gnaphalium scabrum Thunb., Prodr. 150 (1800), Fl. Cap. 655 (1823), non L. (1753).

Helichrysum repandum DC., Prodr. 6: 203 (1838). Gnaphalium repandum (DC.) Sch. Bip. in Bot. Ztg 3: 172 (1845). Lectotype: Clanwilliam div., Olifants River and Villa Brakfontein, Ecklon 780 (G-DC).

H. repandumvar. microphyllum DC., 1. c. H. scabrum var. microphyllum (DC.) Harv., 1. c. Type: Khamiesberg, Dr�ge 2851 (G-DC, holo.; SAM, iso.).

H. scabrum var. scaberrimum Harv., l.c. Type: Caledon, Ecklon s.n.

 

Vouchers: 

Bolus 9021 (BOL; NU); Compton 20778 (NBG); Hutchinson 825 (BOL); Pearson & Pillans 5875 (BOL; NBG).