Photo: L. Fish

Origin of name:

tomentosulum = minutely tomentose

Diagnostic characters:

Leaves generally yellow-green with yellowish hairs
Ivory bracts
Heads very small, in round compact clusters

Description:

Shrublet c. 450�1 000 mm tall, branches virgate, greyish-white woolly, often yellowish in dry state, leafy. Leaves mostly 20�80 x 6�15 mm, diminishing upwards, lanceolate or oblanceolate, apex acute subobtuse, mucronate, petiole often small, but distinct in all but the uppermost reduced leaves, margins flat or somewhat undulate near the base, both surfaces closely greyish-white woolly, wool sometimes thin, 3 main veins of the larger leaves often visible on one or both surfaces, sometimes secondary nerves as well. Heads homogamous, cylindric, c. 4�5 x 2 mm, many in terminal congested or spreading corymbose panicles. Involucral bracts in 4 series, graded, inner about equaling flowers, not radiating, imbricate, oblong-lanceolate, sometimes keeled, subacute to acuminate, opaque white or inner sometimes rosy. Receptacle with short fimbrils. Flowers nearly always 5. Achenes 0.75 mm, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, about equaling corolla, scabrid, bases cohering by patent cilia.

Flowering between March and August.

Distribution:

Grows on sandy and stony soils, on dry stony hillslopes. Recorded from about the 23rd parallel in Namibia northwards to the Kaokoveld in the north-west and nearby parts of Angola, and north-east to the Waterberg, Grootfontein, Nama Pan and the Aha Hills in Botswana (19� 45'S' 21� 8'E).

Desert, Nama Karoo and Savanna Biomes.

Notes:

Closely allied to H. zeyheri.

Two subspecies are recognized:

(a) subsp. tomentosulum

(b) subsp. aromaticum

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum tomentosulum (Klatt) Merxm. in Mitt. bot. StSamml., M�nch. 1: 410 (1954), F.S.W.A. 139: 98 (1967); Merxm. & Roessl. in Mitt. bot. StSamml., M�nch. 15: 367 (1979).

Type:

[Namibia] Hereroland, Nosob, Fleck 261 (Z, holo.).

Synonym(s):

Stenocline tomentosula Klatt in Bull. Herbarium Boissier 3: 434 (1895).

Helichrysum benguellense Hiern var. latifolium [S. Moore ex] Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 254 (1910). Lectotype: Namibia, Okahandja, Dinter 565 (Z; E; K; SAM, isolecto.).

Vouchers:

Giess12378 (M; PRE; WIND); Seydel 1153 (M; PRE; WIND); De Winter & Leistner 5448 (K; M; PRE; WIND); Sullivan 316 (PRE, WIND).