Origin of name:

trunctati = cut short, docked

Diagnostic characters:

Rosette
Numerous flowering stems from a creeping base
Leaves grey with brown tips
Brown bracts (also on stalk)
Compact flower head

Description:

Mat-forming perennial herb, sterns decumbent and often rooting at the base, then erect to c. 150 mm, simple or branching from the base, leafy. Leaves rosetted initially, oblanceolate, uppermost lanceolate, up to 50 x 5 (-7) mm, becoming shorter and narrower upwards and passing into bracts with brown scarious tips, apex subacute to acute to acuminate, apiculate, base broad, clasping, both surfaces and the stems enveloped in silvery silky skin-like indumentum. Heads homogamous, cylindric, c. 3-4 x 1,5-2 mm, many in dense, flat-topped clusters 10-20 mm across, solitary at the branch tips, surrounded by brown papery bracts and webbed together with grey silky-woolly hairs. Involucral bracts in 3 series, graded, equal, equaling the flowers, very loosely imbricate, silvery, pellucid, at least the outer ones golden-brown above, tips blunt, lacerate, crisped, not radiating. Receptacle shortly honeycombed. Flowers 7-14. Achenes not seen, ovaries glabrous. Pappus bristles very few, (often some flowers epappose, others with 1 or 2 bristles), shorter than corolla, subplumose above, smooth below, bases not cohering.

Flowering between January and April.

Distribution:

Grows in marshy grassland or sedge mats over rock flushes. Recorded from the Wolkberg, Limpopo, Devil's Knuckles near Lydenburg, Long Tom Pass over Mount Anderson, MacMac, the Machadodorp area, and near Forbes Reef and the Palwane Hills in western Swaziland.

Grassland and Savanna Biomes.

Notes:

Easily recognized by the brown tips of the leaves and bracts, which is more prominent in young growth.

top

Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum truncatum Burtt Davy in Jl S. Afr. Bot. 1: 110 (1935); Compton, Fl. Swaziland 636 (1976).

Type:

Mpumalanga, Lydenburg distr., Devil's Knuckles, between Lydenburg and Spitzkop, Wilms 739 (K, holo.; BM, iso.).

Synonym(s):

Vouchers:

Compton 25901 (NBG; PRE); Culverwell 0775 (E; NU); Hilliard and Burtt 6015 (E; K; M; NH; NU; PRE; S; Z); Muller & Scheepers 160 (PRE).