Callilepis laureola Dc.

Perennial herb with tufts of stems from a large woody tuber; stems simple or branched from the base, up to c. 60 cm tall, glabrous or thinly or densely hirsute with very slender long sordid hairs. Leaves opposite or alternate, sessile, longer than the nodes at least towards the middle of the stem, up to c. 6.5 x 2 cm, decreasing in size upwards, and passing into the bracts, lanceolate to ovate, 3-nerved from the base, apex acute or acuminate, base rounded to cordate-amplexicaul especially below, margins entire or denticulate, glabrous to hirsute especially on the margins and midribs. Capitula solitary and terminal on the stems or 2-4 in very open corymbs; involucre up to c. 2 cm in diam., depressed-hemispheric; involucral bracts 2-3-seriate, the outer somewhat shorter, up to 1 cm long, lanceolate, acuminate at the apex, glabrous but often with a subserrulate or subciliate margin. Paleae of the disk up to 5 mm long, conduplicate, lanceolate-acuminate, with a lacerate wing to the midrib and lacerate on the upper margins. Ray-florets female, creamy white, ligulate with the ligule up to c. 1.3 cm long, 2-3-dentate or entire at the obtuse apex, with up to c. 9 longitudinal nerves, glabrous. Hermaphrodite disk-florets purplish-black, c. 6 mm long, tubular below and widening slightly above, lobes 5, nearly as long as the tube, linear and acute at the apex ±recurved, glabrous. Cypselas c. 5 mm long, dimorphic, those of the ray 3-angled the 2 outer angles thickened, the inner ±lacerate-winged, pappus a conduplicate 1.5 mm long acute palea and other much shorter scales which are flat and acute to truncate; those of the disk compressed with one margin thickened and the other ±lacerate-winged, with two conduplicate lateral acute paleae c. 2 mm long separated by 1-2 much smaller flat truncate to subacute paleae.