Origin of name:

summi = uppermost, top
-montanum= to do with mountains

Diagnostic characters:

Large solitary heads
Maroon bracts
Bicoloured leaves

Description:

Stoutly branched shrub attaining 1 m, old branches often decumbent, nude below, above clad in old withered leaves, branchlets short, densely white-woolly, very closely leafy. Leaves spreading, mostly 20�50 x 10�25 mm, becoming bracteate under the heads, elliptic, apex obtuse, mucronate, base broad, clasping, margins flat, upper surface glandular-pubescent, woolly over the 3 main nerves, greyish-white woolly below. Heads heterogamous, campanulate, c. 25 mm long, double that across the radiating bracts, solitary at tips of branchlets in axils of upper leaves. Involucral bracts in c. 10 series, graded, imbricate, much exceeding flowers, glossy, outer pale brown, inner rosy fading to white, acute. Receptacle shortly honeycombed. Flowers c. 1 000, c. 50 female, 950 homogamous. Achenes not seen, ovaries glabrous. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, barbellate above, bases not cohering.

Flowering between March and June.

Distribution:

Recorded only from the summit of Mount Anderson in Mpumalanga, above c. 2 100 m, growing among rocks.

Grassland Biome.

Taxonomy:

Literature:

H. summo-montanum Verdoorn in Flower. Pl. S. Afr. t. 483 (1933).

Type: 

Mpumalanga, Pilgrim's Rest distr., near Sabie, summit Mt Anderson, 7 300 ft, June 1932, Smuts 44 (PRE, holo.; K, iso.).

Synonym(s): 

H. andersoniense Burtt Davy in Jl S. Afr. Bot. 1: 107 (1935). Type: Lydenburg distr., summit Mt Anderson, Sept. 1919, Rogers 22990 (K, holo.; BOL, fragment).

Vouchers:

top