Origin of name:

uni = single;
nervi = fibre, nerve, sinew

Diagnostic characters:

Open branched inflorescences
Immature specimens with red bracts and yellow inner bracts, mature specimens with bright yellow bracts
Woody base but long slender herbaceous stems

Description:

Virgate subshrub, stems 300�1000 mm tall, several from a stout woody caudex, simple or corymbosely branched above, thinly grey-felted, closely leafy but old parts often nude. Leaves 5�20 x 3�8 mm, smallest near the heads, elliptic, apex acute or subacute, black-mucronate, base cuneate into a short (1�2 mm) petiole, margins flat, both surfaces grey-felted with a yellowish tinge at least when dry. Heads homogamous, turbinate-campanulate, c. 6 x 3 mm, many on short scaly peduncles in small or large corymbose-panicles. Involucral bracts in c. 6 series, graded, imbricate, outer pale brown or reddish, cobwebby woolly, inner about equalling or slightly exceeding flowers, pale lemon-yellow, acute to very acute, erect or somewhat squarrose. Receptacle smooth or shortly honeycombed. Flowers 6�11. Achenes 1 mm long, with highly myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, barbellate above bases cohering strongly by patent cilia, some light fusion in bundles as well.

 

Flowering specimens have been collected in July, October and December, but July is probably the main month, and this would perhaps account for paucity of records.

Distribution:

Favours rocky sites. A Limpopo-Mpumalanga-Gauteng endemic, recorded from the mountains between Potgietersrus and the Wolkberg, Pilgrim's Rest, the Waterberg and the Witwatersrand.

Savanna Biome.

Notes:

H. uninervium,  in common with a great many other species, has triplinerved leaves, but frequently only the midvein is visible, which clearly suggested the specific epithet. A very distinctive species, but clearly allied to H. excisum.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum uninervium Burtt Davy in Jl S. Afr. Bot. 1: 110 (1935).

 

Type:

Mpumalanga, Lydenburg distr., Pilgrim's Rest, July 1919, Rogers 18000a (K, holo.; BM; PRE, iso.).

 

Synonym(s):

 

 

Vouchers:

Codd 10410 (PRE); Dahlstrand 1857 (PRE).