Phylica alba Pillans

A much branched shrub about 60 cm high with ascending, wiry branches. Branchlets slender, clothed with spreading, grey pubescence. Leaves 5-7 mm long, erect-spreading: lamina linear-lanceolate, obtuse or callus-acute, cordate at base, slightly incurved, with revolute margins almost covering the lower surface; upper surface minutely scabrid, obscurely and sparsely tubercled on the margins, at first pilose on the margins and about the apex: petiole 0.5-1 mm long. Capitula 5-8 mm wide, hemisphaeric, many-flowered, solitary or clustered, subtended by several leaves and leafy bracts. Bracts of the inner flowers 2.5 mm long, linear, dorsally villous. Bracteoles about as long, acicular, villous. Flowers subsessile, 2.5-3.5 mm long: calyx-tube 0.75-1 mm deep, urceolate, glabrous: sepals 1.25-1.5 mm long, ovate-lanceolate, acute, densely white-tomentose on the outer surface; inner surface rounded-convex except at the base, glabrous. Petals inserted shortly above the middle of the tube, 0.5 mm long: lamina orbicular, cucullate: claw scarcely as long, cuneate-oblong. Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary obconic, glabrous. Style together with the stigma 0.5 mm long.