Helichrysum allioides Less.

Perennial herb, stock woody, crowned with thin wiry leaf bases, roots producing thin tubers, flowering stems usually solitary, up to 650 mm tall, leafy below becoming pedunculoid upwards, thinly woolly. Leaves mostly radical, up to 600 x 20 mm, linear-lanceolate, apex acuminate, base gradually narrowed to a thin wiry petiole accounting for up to half the leaf length, margins often undulate, upper surface thinly woolly, glabrescent, then smooth and coriaceous, lower surface woolly-felted, triplinerved, tertiary veins invisible, cauline leaves similar but soon sessile, cordate clasping, rapidly passing into distant bracts. Heads homogamous, campanulate, c. 6 x 4-6 mm, many in a compact, flat-topped corymb. lnvolucral bracts in c. 4 series, closely imbricate, bases woolly, tips ovate, subobtuse, outer often purplish or reddish, inner pale yellow or sometimes whitish, equalling the disc, scarcely radiating. Receptacle with fimbrils equalling the ovary. Flowers 20-30(-43). Achenes c. 1 mm long, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, scabrid, bases cohering strongly by patent cilia.