Origin of name:

xeros = dry
chrysos = old, yellow

Diagnostic characters:

Bright yellow bracts with orange-brown tips
Large flower heads
Open branched inflorescence on long stalks

Description:

Perennial herb, rootstock woody, crowned with one or a few leaf rosettes, flowering stems one or a few lateral to the rosette, erect, simple, leafy below, becoming pedunculoid and distantly bracteate upwards, tawny- or grey-woolly. Radical leaves c. 60�100 x 25�50 mm, oblong-elliptic, apex subacute, base slightly narrowed, clasping, both surfaces grey-woolly; cauline leaves similar but becoming lanceolate upwards, broad-based, decurrent in long narrow wings. Heads homogamous, subglobose, c. 10 x 20 mm across when fully radiating, few on nude peduncles in a lax corymbose panicle. Involucral bracts in c. 10 series, graded, loosely imbricate, inner exceeding flowers, radiating, acute, golden-yellow overlaid reddish brown. Receptacle with fimbrils exceeding ovaries. Flowers 122�240. Achenes not seen, ovaries glabrous. Pappus bristles many, equaling corolla, yellow, barbellate in upper half, bases cohering strongly by patent cilia.

 

Flowering in December and January.

Distribution:

Grows on moist grassy mountain and hill slopes. Ranges from southernmost KwaZulu-Natal (Alfred and Ixopo districts) through the Transkei to the Amatola Mountains, Katberg, Boschberg at Somerset East, and Grahamstown.

Grassland and Thicket Biomes.

Notes:

Distinctive and easily recognized.

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Taxonomy:

Literature:

Helichrysum xerochrysum DC., Prodr. 6: 201 (1838); Harv. in F. C. 3: 243 (1865); Moeser in Bot. Jb. 44: 321 (1910).

 

Type:

Cape, between the Kei and Bashee, Dr�ge 5020 (G-DC, holo.; BM; P, iso.).

 

Synonym(s): 

Gnaphalium xerochrysum (DC.) Sch. Bip. in Bot. Ztg 3: 171 (1845).

 

Vouchers: 

Acocks 9573 (PRE); Flanagan 2650 (PRE; SAM); Galpin 6296 (PRE); Hilliard & Burtt 11206 (E; K; MO; NU; PRE; S); Pegler 1571 (BM).