Diagnostic characters:

Straw-coloured bracts
Compact branched inflorescence
Large leaves with distinct margins on lower surface
Medium sized heads

Description:

Perennial herb, crown brown silky-woolly, stems one or several, simple, erect to c. 600 mm, thinly white-felted, leafy in lower half, bracteate above. Leaves up to c. 120 x 30 mm, elliptic, or elliptic-spathulate, apex acute, base narrowed, half-clasping, both surfaces thinly to thickly greyish-white woolly, sometimes glabrescent, the wool then clinging to the margins and the three prominent nerves. Heads homogamous, campanulate or broadly cylindric, c. 5 x 3 mm, up to c. 12 in tight clusters, these in turn arranged in an open corymbose panicle. Involucral bracts in c. 6 series, graded, closely imbricate, woolly, inner semipellucid, straw-coloured, or pale brown, plicate, equaling the flowers, not radiating. Receptacle with fimbrils about equaling ovary. Flowers c. 15�30. Achenes not seen, ovaries glabrous. Pappus bristles many, about equaling corolla, scabrid, bases cohering lightly by patent cilia.

 

Flowering between December and March.

Distribution:

Grows in grassland. Ranges from the highlands of Mpumalanga and Swaziland to the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands and Umzimkulu district, Transkei.

Grassland and Savanna Biomes.

Notes:

Rarely collected. Can be confused with H. acutatum but that species has nearly smooth receptacles and hairy achenes, and with H. pannosum, which has similar receptacle and ovaries, but smooth, lemon-yellow, acute involucral bracts.

Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum thapsus (O. Kuntze) Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 263 (1910); Compton, Fl. Swaziland 635 (1976); Hilliard, Compositae in Natal 173 (1977).

 

Type:

KwaZulu-Natal, Lions River distr., Highlands station, Kuntze (NY, holo.; K, iso.; PRE photo.).

 

Synonym(s):

Gnaphalium thapsus O. Kuntze, Rev. Gen. Pl. 3,2: 154 (1898).

Helichrysum lanatomarginatum Mark�tter in Annale Univ. Stellenbosch 8 sect. A, 1: 47 (1930). Type: Bergville distr., Oliviershoek Pass, c. 5 500 ft, Thode s.n., STE 2796 (NBG, holo.).

 

Vouchers:

Devenish 1925 (E; K; NU); Hilliard & Burtt 14286 (E; K; NU; PRE; S); Rogers 18642 (K; Z); Tyson 1473 (G; K; Z); Wilms 733 (BM; E; G; K; NU; Z).

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