Phylica burchellii Pillans

A moderately branched, rather slender shrub, about 30 cm high. Branchlets ascending, slender, clothed with short, adpressed, grey pubescence. Leaves well spaced, 1-1.8 cm long: lamina erect-spreading, linear, semiterete, acute, often apiculate, rounded at base, with closely revolute margins covering the lower sin-face; upper surface minutely tuberculate-scabrid, at first covered with short, adpressed, grey pubescence, becoming almost glabrous. Capitula solitary, widely conical, about 1 cm long, many-flowered, subtended by 1 or 2 leaves. Bracts of the outer flowers about 7 mm long, foliaceous. Bracts of the inner flowers 5-6 mm long, obovate-rotundate in the lower half, narrowed upwards into a lanceolate, acute upper half, villous on the outer surface and on the inner surface of the lanceolate portion. Bracteoles 2, linear, acute, grey-villous. Flowers 5 mm long, on a short, hirsute stipe: calyx-tube 1.75-2 mm deep, cyathiform, sparsely villous on the upper half with ascending, grey hairs, glabrous or with a few strayed hairs on the lower, with an indistinct disc lining the lower half: sepals 2-2.25 mm long, erect-spreading, ovate-lanceolate, acute, prominently convex on the inner surface, acutely convex on the upper half, villous with grey hairs on the outer surface. Petals inserted half way up the tube, about 1 mm long: lamina widely ovate, incurved-cucullate: claw as long, oblong. Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary obconic, glabrous or with a few strayed hairs from the stipe. Style scarcely 0.75 mm long, columnar, trigonous. Stigma composed of 3 small rounded lobes.