Phylica calcarata Pillans

A sparingly branched, rather slender shrub, about 35 cm high. Branchlets slender, clothed with long, spreading, silky, grey hairs. Leaves closely set, 1.2-1.5 cm long: lamina linear-lanceolate, acute, subcordate at base, erect-spreading, with revolute margins covering about half of the lower, densely tomentose surface; upper surface widely rounded in transverse section, smooth or minutely tuberculate-scabrid, clothed with long, ascending, grey hairs, tardily becoming glabrous: petiole about 1 mm long, villous. Capitula solitary, 1.5-2 cm wide, hemisphaeric, surrounded.by many, long, villous leaves. Bracts 1.3-1.8 cm long, overtopping the outer flowers, linear, acuminate, broad-based, villous. Bracteoles 2, 7-9 mm long, acicular, villous. Flowers shortly stipitate, about 8 mm long: calyx-tube about 2.5 mm deep, cyathiform, glabrous, with a thin disc adnate to the basal half: sepals 5-6 mm long, narrowly linear, acuminate, widened at base, villous with grey hairs on the outer surface, convex and glabrous on the inner surface. Petals inserted on the lower half of the tube, about 1 mm long: lamina calyptriform, almost spurred at the apex, with the front edge lower than the back edge: claw much longer, linear. Anthers rotundate-reniform, 1-celled. Ovary narrowly obconic, much narrower than and sharply distinguished from the tube, glabrous. Stigma subsessile.