Diagnostic characters:

Annual plants growing cartwheel-like
Medium sized heads
Pinkish bracts
Leaves crowded below heads, woolly

Description:

Annual herb forming small dense mats up to c. 200 mm across, stems many from the crown, well branched, prostrate, rooting, branchlets grey-tomentose, leafy. Leaves 4-10 x 1.5-6 mm, 8-10 x 4-6 mm at the crown, narrowly to broadly spathulate, tips rounded, extreme tip folded and slightly recurved, base broad, clasping, margins flat, both surfaces grey-woolly. Heads homogamous or heterogamous, campanulate, c. 4 x 2 mm, many crowded in small terminal glomerules, closely surrounded by leaves, the innermost leaves webbed to the outer involucral bracts. Involucral bracts in c. 3 series, outermost short, inner subequal, slightly exceeding flowers, tips very acute, slightly recurved, opaque straw-coloured or reddish. Receptacle nearly smooth. Flowers 19-32, 0-3 female, 19-31 homogamous. Achenes 0.75 mm long, with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, scabrid, bases scarcely cohering by patent cilia.

Flowers between September and November.

Distribution:

Grows on bare stony ground, and will colonize eroded places and hard gravelly road verges. Recorded from the mountains of the E. Central Cape: Koudeveldberg, Sneeuberg, Compassberg, Renosterberg and Wapadsberg.

Nama Karoo and Grassland Biomes.

Notes:

Distinguished from H. leontonyx by its congested habit and acute not acuminate, involucral bracts.

Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum tysonii Hilliard in Notes R. bot. Gdn Edinb. 40: 269 (1982).

Type:

Eastern Cape, Graaff-Reinet district, Renosterberg above Lootsberg railway halt, c. 1 800 m, farm Blaauwater, 24 xi 1977, Hilliard & Burtt 10626 (NU, holo.; E; K; MO; PRE; S, iso.).

Synonym(s):

Vouchers:

Acocks 16514 (PRE); Acocks 24580 (PRE); Bolus 509 (BOL, K); Hilliard & Burtt 10618 (E; K; M; NU; S); Tyson 417 (PRE).

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