Suffrutex, erect, virgate, with slender branchlets leafy towards their apices, 25-60 cm tall, rarely 1 mm tall, branchlets pubescent with tubercle-based stellate hairs or fringed scales, intermixed with single, thin-walled, gland-tipped hairs. Stipules linear-oblong or very narrowly ovate-oblong, 2-8 mm long, 0.75-2 mm broad, stellate-pubescent with a few gland-tipped hairs intermixed. Leaves subsessile, petiole rarely up to 2.5 mm long; blade narrowly oblong-cuneate, usually folded, 7-15 mm long, rarely up to 22 mm long, 1.5-4 mm broad near apex, apex rounded, mucronate or subtruncate and lobed, persistently stellate-pubescent on both sides, either coarsely so with hairs short or long, or densely so with long, thin-walled hairs (tomentose?), simple gland-tipped hairs usually intermixed. Inflorescence of 1-to 2-flowered cymes, one or two terminal on branchlets and appearing axillary when ultimate branchlets are very short; peduncles 1-4 cm long; pedicels unequal in a cyme, 2-8 mm long, densely and softly pubescent with gland-tipped hairs interspersed; bracts usually 3, linear to subulate, about 3.5 mm long and up to 0.5 mm broad, acute with a few erect hairs at apex. Calyx about 7 mm long, lobed to just beyond the middle, stellate-pubescent, densely and with more thin-walled hairs at the base, some hairs gland-tipped. Petals twisted, usually dark red, “claret red”, “deep maroon”, “deep port wine red”, “creamy yellow in lower half”, about 8 mm long, about 3.5 mm broad near the somewhat oblique apex, more or less oblong in upper third, then narrowed into a waist and produced into a claw with infolded margins and with stellate tomentum along sides. Stamens with hyaline, more or less narrowly oblong filaments which are somewhat longer than anthers and were glabrous in the specimens dissected, hooked at the point of attachment; anthers ciliate. Ovary densely stellate-pubescent, about 2.5 mm long; styles cohering about 2.75 mm long; stipe 0.75 mm long. Capsule 5-8 mm long, 5-umbonate at apex, stellate-pubescent especially along thickened sutures where stellate hairs are on tubercled bases.
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Suffrutex, slenderly branched, erect, virgate, 0.25-0.60 m high; branchlets, leaves, pedicels and calyx pubescent with tubercle-based, stellate hairs or fringed scales, intermixed with single, thin-walled, glandular hairs. Leaves subsessile, narrowly oblong-cuneate, usually folded, apex mucronate; both sides coarsely pubescent with short, stellate hairs or tomentose with long, thin-walled hairs. Stipules linear-oblong. Inflorescences 1-or 2-flowered, terminal cymes; peduncles 1-4 mm long, length of pedicels unequal. Flowers ± 8 mm long, deep, port wine-red, cream-coloured in lower half. Calyx 5-lobed to beyond middle, sinuses v-shaped; pubescence as above. Petals strongly contorted, oblong in upper 1/3, narrowed into a claw with stellate-haired margins. Flowering time all year. Fruit a capsule, apex 5-umbonate, sutures thickened with tubercle-based, stellate hairs.
Like H. flammea but leaves smaller, narrow and folded on midline, roughly golden-hairy.
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