Helichrysum miconiifolium Dc.

Perennial herb, rootstock stout, woody, crowned with fibrous leaf bases, roots producing narrow tubers, flowering stem usually solitary, up to 600 mm tall, thinly woolly, leafy but more distantly so above. Radical leaves up to 300 x 45 mm, blade narrowly to broadly elliptic, triplinerved, abruptly contracted to a thin wiry petiole half to one third the total leaf length, expanded and clasping below, apex more or less acute, upper surface scabridulous or occasionally smooth, lower white-felted, sometimes glabrescent, margins weakly revolute; cauline leaves similar to radical but soon sessile, linear-lanceolate, acuminate, margins strongly revolute, passing upwards into bracts. Heads homogamous, campanulate, ±5 x 5 mm, many in a loose or compact, flat-topped, corymbose panicle. Involucral bracts in ±6 series, graded, loosely imbricate, about equalling flowers, base woolly, limb glossy, ovate, acute to acuminate, opaque or subopaque, lemon-yellow often washed light golden-brown, not radiating. Receptacle with fimbrils at least equalling ovaries. Flowers 12-23. Achenes 1 mm long, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, scabrid, bases cohering strongly by patent cilia, lightly fused as well.