Helichrysum spodiophyllum Hilliard & B.L.Burtt

Mat-forming closely tufted perennial herb or subshrub, main stem woody, up to 10 mm diam., with numerous prostrate, ultimately bare and rooting, branches becoming thickened at the nodes and there producing tufts of leaves, flowering stems mostly decumbent at the base, then erect to ±100-250 mm, simple, silky-silvery, leafy becoming bracteate upwards. Radical leaves 10-100 x 1-2 mm, linear, flat or channelled, apex subacute, base expanded, clasping, both surfaces closely grey silky-woolly, cauline leaves up to 20 mm long, smaller upwards, linear-lanceolate to lanceolate, broad-based, clasping, spreading or appressed, grey silky-woolly. Heads homogamous, cylindric, 4-5 x 2 mm, many in a tightly congested corymbose cluster 10-20 mm across, heads webbed together at the base with tissue-paper-like indumentum. Involucral bracts in 3-4 series, closely imbricate, about equalling the flowers, translucent, outer tipped brown, inner bright yellow becoming opaque, minutely radiating. Receptacle honeycombed. Flowers 8-12. Achenes 0.75 mm, obscurely ribbed, glabrous. Pappus bristles ±5, equalling corolla, tips shortly plumose, bases nude, not cohering. Flowers between December and February in the northern part of its range, but as late as May in the Cape.