Helichrysum sphaeroideum Moeser

Straggling subshrub perhaps up to 600 mm tall, branching from the base, branches often tangled, long, slender, thinly white-woolly, leafy, becoming distantly so and pedunculoid below the compound inflorescence. Leaves 7-40 x 4-15 mm, lower with an elliptic to subrotund, acute to obtuse, mucronate blade, narrowed below and petiole-like, base expanded, ear-clasping, petiole becoming less pronounced upwards, uppermost leaves oblong, sessile, passing into distant, lanceolate-acuminate bracts, margins of all minutely crisped, upper surface coarsely hairy, lightly cobwebby as well, at least initially, lower surface thinly white-woolly-felted. Heads homogamous, cylindric-campanulate, 3-4 x 2-4 mm, few to many in terminal congested clusters 10-20 mm across, becoming somewhat lax with age. Involucral bracts in 4-5 series, more or less graded, outermost pellucid, tinged palest brown, glabrous or thinly cobwebby, inner with tips opaque milk-white, sometimes reddish above the stereome, or rarely the whole tip suffused pink, obtuse, or subacute, somewhat crisped, minutely radiating. Receptacle shortly honeycombed. Flowers 8-31. Achenes 0.75 mm long, ± cylindric, with peculiar thickened hairs, not myxogenic. Pappus bristles many, equalling corolla, scabrid, bases cohering strongly by patent cilia. Flowering between September and February, but mainly in December and January.