Phylica diffusa Pillans

A dwarf, diffuse shrub, with slender branches. Branchlets very slender, minutely pubescent. Leaves rather distantly placed, about 6 mm long: lamina spreading or deflexed, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, with an incurved, mucronulate apex, cordate at base, with revolute margins covering a half or less of the lower surface; upper surface widely convex, furrowed at the base, minutely scabrid, obsoletely tubercled and at first shortly pilose on the margins, soon becoming glabrous: petiole 1-1.5 mm long. Capitula 5-8 mm wide, solitary at the ends of short branchlets and usually associated in lax panicles, widely hemisphaeric, subtended by 1 or 2 short leaves. Bracts of the inner flowers about 1.5 mm long, linear, villous on the outer surface. Bracteoles 2, similar, acicular. Flowers 2-2.5 mm long, on a villous stipe: calyx-tube broadly cyathiform, glabrous: sepals 0.75 mm long, ovate, acute; inner surface angular-convex on the upper half; outer surface with a dense covering of slightly wavy, white hairs. Petals inserted half way up the tube, 0.5 mm long: lamina rotundate, cucullate: claw slightly longer, oblong. Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary turbinate, glabrous. Stigma subsessile, with 3 obtuse lobes.