Phylica costata Pillans

A much branched, dense shrub, about 35 cm high, with ascending, wiry branches and slender, shortly tomentose branchlets. Leaves moderately spaced, 0.7-1 cm long, erect-spreading or spreading: lamina linear, callus-acute, rounded at base, semiterete, with closely revolute margins covering the lower surface; upper surface tubercled, at first silky-villous, becoming glabrous: petiole 2.5-3 mm long, much compressed. Capitula very numerous, solitary at the ends of the branchlets, 5-7 mm wide, loosely 4-6-flowered, surrounded and overtopped by several leaves. Bracts of the outer flowers about 5 mm long, foliaceous, those of the inner flowers about half as long. Bracteoles absent. Flowers about 5 mm long, stipitate, constricted between the tube and the ovary, clothed with grey tomentum on the outer surface, but least densely so on the tube: calyx-tube 2.5-3 mm deep, urceolate, with 9 slightly raised longitudinal ridges on the outer surface, without any apparent disc within: sepals 1.5 mm long, ovate, acute, with a narrow keel up the middle of the inner surface. Petals inserted at the mouth of the tube, 1 mm long: lamina obovate, deeply cucullate, tapered at base into a short cuneate claw. Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary turbinate. Style 3.5 mm long, slender. Stigma minute, shortly 3-lobed. Fruit 5 mm long, rotundate, sparsely tomentose, pale brown, surmounted by a small calyx-area.