Helichrysum melanacme Dc.

Perennial herb or shrub, up to 500 mm high; soft-wooded, branches often tangled; thinly greyish white-woolly, closely leafy. Leaves: blade very narrowly ovate or linear, 8-35 x 1-5 mm, apex acuminate, base broad, ear-clasping, margins revolute, upper surface woolly or cobwebby, lower surface white-woolly. Heads disciform, cylindric or narrowly campanulate, ± 3 x 2 mm, many in cymose clusters arranged in a compact, sometimes lax, terminal, corymbose panicle. Involucral bracts in ± 4 series, graded, closely imbricate, inner nearly equalling florets, tips obtuse, crisped, scarcely radiating, tawny or innermost straw-coloured, stereome divided. Receptacle epaleate, with fimbrils equalling ovaries. Flowers: female and disc florets (15-)20-45, 6-18 female florets, fewer than disc florets; corolla of disc florets funnel-shaped, yellow; Nov.-Mar. Fruit with cypsela glabrous. Pappus of many barbellate bristles, bases cohering by patent cilia.