Metalasia riparia T.M.Salter

Erect, robust, much-branched shrub, up to 2.5 m high. Branches ascending or mostly erect, young comparatively long, greenish and soft, slightly to densely whitish or sometimes greenish-tomentose, sometimes also with reddish hairs, especially towards the tips giving such branches a rosy colour, older becoming glabrous or nearly so, with distinct sometimes scale-like leaf-scars. Foliage dense. Leaves mostly spreading to erect-spreading or sometimes declinate, straight, with axillary brachyblasts often less than half as long as the subtending leaf, slightly involute and flat or usually slightly concave above, to much involute and rounded beneath, linear-lanceolate to narrowly obovate, 2.3-13 x 0.8-2.5 mm, acute or sometimes shortly acuminate, mostly non-twisted to half-twisted, densely pubescent and also with coarse hairs to almost glabrous, or with some coarse hairs only towards the base, midvein invisible. Synflorescenses (5-)15-60 mm wide, dense and distinctly branched, with numerous capitula arranged in 5-15 obscurely to slightly branched, campanulate to flattened and whitish or sometimes greenish, dense clusters, each containing 5 or often numerous capitula. Capitula 3(-4)-flowered, sessile, becoming confluent, completely fused by hairs within the clusters, lower 2/3 of each capitulum hairy. Involucre very narrowly campanulate, apically 1 mm wide, sometimes up to 1.5 mm wide at anthesis. Involucral bracts in 3-4 series, of subequal length, outermost subfoliaceous with scarious tips, those inwards scarious to petaloid, outermost linear to lanceolate-subulate, those inwards narrowly oblong to narrowly ovate with non-hyaline part narrowly oblong to oblanceolate or sometimes subspathulate, all except outermost with broad to very broad but inwards narrowing hyaline margins, all acute but innermost usually rounded and obtuse, inner and innermost sometimes apiculate, all apically erect, outer sometimes irregularly dentate, outermost with many interlocking and also sometimes with coarse hairs reaching almost throughout the bract, those inwards less hairy to glabrous, outermost reddish, those inwards white, innermost with a stereome about 1.1-2.2 times as long as the lamina. Corolla narrowly cylindrical, 2.6-2.9 mm long; lobes erect. Anthers apically rounded. Cypselas spheroid to broadly ovoid, 1.2-1.5 mm long, with an indistinct annular ridge, whitish-papillose, blackish-brown. Pappus bristles with a usually slightly serrate and narrow or sometimes broader shaft, apically flattened or often flat and entire to slightly serrate, sometimes thickened towards the very apex, obtuse or sometimes acute.