Origin of name:

Named after the Witteberg, in the Barkly East distr.

Diagnostic characters:

Bicoloured leaves
Leaf marks on stem
Greenish-yellow bracts
Large heads in compact inflorescence

Description:

Spindly shrub up to 900 mm high, old stems bare, rough with leaf bases, branchlets closely leafy. Leaves commonly up to 20 x 3.5 mm, or 35 x 10 mm on coppice growth, ovate-lanceolate, apex acute, mucronate, base broad, half-clasping, margins revolute, both surfaces sometimes grey-woolly, or commonly upper surface very lightly cobwebby, hairs soon deciduous or confined to the midrib, often minutely gland-dotted and glutinous, sometimes glandular-hairy as well when young, lower surface white-felted, striate. Heads heterogamous, campanulate, 5�6 mm long, c. 8 mm across the radiating involucral bracts, bases white-woolly, many in compact rounded corymbose clusters 15�20 mm across at the branch tips. Involucral bracts in 5�6 series, closely imbricate, graded, glossy, outer light brown, inner slightly exceeding flowers, tips obtuse, bright canary-yellow, minutely radiating. Receptacle honeycombed. Flowers 34�56, 6�12 female, 26�50 homogamous. Achenes not seen, ovaries 1 mm long with duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, tips subplumose, bases cohering by patent cilia.

 

Flowers between November and February.

Distribution:

On the high Lesotho mountains, the Witteberg and the Cape Drakensberg, in large but localized colonies on moist grassy mountain slopes or valley bottoms.

Grassland Biome.

Notes:

Can be confused with H. trilineatum but has differently shaped leaves, broadest at the base.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum witbergense H. Bol. in Trans. S. Afr. phil. Soc. 18: 387 (1907); Hilliard, Compositae in Natal 205 (1977).

 

Type: 

Cape, Barkly East distr., Witbergen, Ben Macdhui, c. 2 925 m, Galpin 6692 (BOL, holo.; K; NH; SAM, iso.).

 

Synonym(s):

H. splendidum var. basuticum Phill. in Ann. S. Afr. Mus. 9: 344 (1917). Type: Lesotho, Maseru distr., slopes of Machache Mtn, Jacottet in herbarium Dieterlen 1068 (SAM, holo.; PRE, iso.).

 

Vouchers:

Esterhuysen 13192 (BOL); Hilliard & Burtt 7109 (E; K; MO; NU; PRE; S); Hilliard & Burtt 9685 (E; K; MO; NU; S); Nordenstam 2084 (S).