Phylica curvifolia (Presl) Pillans ex Fourc.

A moderately branched shrub, 60-100 cm high, with ascending, wiry branches. Branchlets rather slender, arising, usually in a group of 3, from the old capitula, tomentose and pilose. Leaves closely set, 1-1.5 cm long: lamina linear-lanceolate, obtuse, rounded at base, erect-spreading, incurved, eventually reflexed, with revolute margins covering most or all of the lower surface; upper surface rounded, smooth, obscurely tubercled and at first pilose on the midrib and margins, tardily becoming glabrous: petiole 1-2 mm long. Capitula solitary, 1.5-1.8 cm wide, hemisphaeric, with an involucre composed of leaves with a shortened lamina and enlarged petiole and of the foliaceous bracts of the outer flowers. (The greater part of this involucre may remain intact upon the living plant for 3 or 4 years.) Bracts of the inner flowers 6-8 mm long, acicular, villous except on the lower half of the inner surface, plumose at the apex. Bracteoles absent. Flowers shortly stipitate, 6.5-7 mm long: calyx-tube narrowly urceolate, tapered at base, 2 mm deep, with a few long, caducous hairs on the outer surface: sepals 2-2.25 mm long, ascending, almost straight, lanceolate, attenuate; inner surface rounded-convex, glabrous; outer surface bearing a dense mass of long, woolly, white hairs which are, for the most part, deciduous. Petals 0.75-1 mm long, inserted on the lower half of the tube: lamina lanceolate, somewhat sulcate on the inner side, incurved above the middle; claw scarcely as long, narrowly linear. Anthers 1-celled. Ovary about 2 mm long, clavate, separated from the tube by a distinct constriction, with long, deciduous hairs. Style stout, together with the 3-humped stigma about 0.5 mm high. Fruit rotundate, smooth, glabrous, red-brown.