Phylica cephalantha Sond.

A dense shrub about 40 cm high, with ascending wiry branchlets covered with minute, cream-coloured tomentum. Leaves 5-8 mm long: lamina erect-spreading, linear, obtuse, with closely revolute margins covering the lower surface; upper surface rounded, finely tubercled or almost smooth, at first minutely pubescent but very soon becoming glabrous: petiole about 1 mm long. Capitula about 5 mm wide, solitary or panicled, hemisphaeric, subtended by several leaves. Bracts 1.25-1.5 mm long, linear, obtuse, closely covered on the dorsal surface with silky, buff-coloured hairs. Bracteoles 2 (often absent), minute, villous. Flowers 1.75-2 mm long, on a slender stipe about 0.5 mm long: calyx-tube broadly cyathiform filled with a fleshy disc having a free outer margin; outer surface covered with long, ascending, buff-coloured hairs: sepals 1 mm long, ovate, acute, inner surface flattened, glabrous, with a slightly prominent midrib; outer surface covered with short, spreading, buff-coloured hairs. Petals inserted at the mouth of the tube, 0.5 mm long: lamina cucullate, orbicular: claw short, cuneate-oblong. Anthers 1-celled. Ovary obconic, densely covered with long, ascending, silky, buff-coloured hairs. Style scarcely 0.5 mm long, columnar. Stigma minute, 3-fid. Fruit about 8 mm long, narrowly rotundate, usually widest above the middle, covered with short grey or buff tomentum, with a very small area on the summit.