Phylica affinis Sond.

A wiry shrub, 30-40 cm high, moderately branched. Branchlets ascending, covered with short, grey tomentum and occasional long hairs. Leaves crowded, 0.8-1.3 cm long: lamina erect-spreading, mostly straight, linear, obtuse, rounded at base, with closely revolute margins covering the lower surface; upper surface tubercled on the margins, pilose on the midrib and margins, becoming glabrous: petiole 0.75-1 mm long. Capitula solitary, about 1.5 cm wide, hemisphaeric, surrounded by many leaves and with long, plumose bracts on the outer margin. Bracts distinctly overtopping the flowers, 1-1.7 cm long, acicular, grey-villous, the outer longer than the inner. Bracteoles absent or rarely 1 present. Flowers 9 mm long, on a villous pedicel about 1.5 mm long, densely covered outside with short, grey tomentum and long, ascending hairs: calyx-tube about 3 mm deep, narrowly cyathiform, glabrous within, with a disc lining the base and raised around the base of the style into a conspicuous annulus: sepals erect-spreading, 4 mm long, deltoid and flattened at base, thence subulate, acuminate, with a dense beard of grey hairs arising upon the sides at the base. Petals inserted on the lower half of the tube, rarely absent from some flowers, 0.75 mm long, linear-oblanceolate, not clawed, almost flat, with 1-4 distinct hairs on the apical margin. Anthers 1-celled. Ovary narrowly obconic. Style slender, 1-2 mm long. Stigma clavate, distinctly lobed.