Phylica confusa Pillans

A much branched shrub, about 60 cm high, with wiry, often virgate, ascending branches. Branchlets slender, villous and clothed with short, grey pubescence. Leaves closely set, 0.5-1.5 cm long: lamina erect-spreading or spreading, somewhat incurved, linear or lanceolate, obtuse or acute, cordate at base, semiterete and with closely revolute margins covering the lower surface or the lower surface much exposed; upper surface minutely tubercled, at first pubescent, soon becoming glabrous: petiole about 1 mm long. Capitula mostly on short branchlets and associated in paniculate clusters, 3-5 mm wide, hemisphaeric, surrounded by several leaves and outer foliaceous bracts. Bracts of the inner flowers about 2 mm long, ovate or oblong, acute, silky-pubescent. Bracteoles 2, shorter, linear-lanceolate. Flowers sessile, 2.25-2.5 mm long, entirely covered on the outer surface with white tomentum: calyx-tube very widely cyathiform, filled with a fleshy disc: sepals 0.75 mm long, deltoid-ovate, acute, keeled on the upper half of the inner surface. Petals inserted at the mouth of the tube and shortly adnate to the margin of the disc: lamina orbicular, deeply concave, cucullate: claw very short and narrow. Anthers 1-celled. Ovary obconic. Style together with the stigma about 0.5 mm long, subulate, obtuse. Fruit 5-6 mm long, obovate-rotundate, glabrous, blackish, with 3 longitudinal furrows, surmounted by a small calyx-base.