Eriocaulon zambesiense Ruhland

Rosulate perennial from a short rhizome.. Leaves linear, 5–8 cm. long, 3–4 mm. wide, many-nerved, spongy, subacute.. Scapes 5–15, flexuous, 10–35 cm. high, 5–6-ribbed; sheaths equalling the leaves, straight-sided, obliquely slit, the limb acute.. Capitulum subglobose, slightly wider than long, 5.5–7 mm. diameter, black andwhite, the white-hairy petal tips intermingling with the darker bracts, sometimes viviparous; involucral bracts small, straw-coloured or flushed grey, cartilaginous, oblong, 1.7–2.0 mm. long, rounded, glabrous, reflexed at maturity; floral bracts narrowly cuneate or oblanceolate, grey, white-pilose towards the acute tip; receptacle villous; flowers trimerous, 2.1–2.5 mm. long.. Male flowers: sepals blackish, oblong, keeled, unequally connate below into an infundibular spathe, the tips broadly rounded, white-pilose; petals shortly exserted from the calyx, slightly unequal, white-pilose at the tips, the longest 0.7–1.0 mm. long; anthers black.. Female flowers wedge-shaped, strongly trigonous: sepals navicular, blackish, two 1.5–2.0×0.8–1.0 mm., the third narrower, all strongly keeled, deeply concave and gibbous, keel with a spongy wing, white-pilose around the tip, margins villous along the inside with tubercle-based hyaline hairs; petals and ovary sessile; petals narrowly oblanceolate, shortly exceeding the sepals, slightly unequal, white-pilose at the tips, hairy on the inner blade with hairs similar to those along the sepal-margins.. Seeds ellipsoid, 0.7 mm. long, yellow or brown with close-set transverse lines of white papillae.