Small shrubs up to 4 dm. tall (or up to 1.2 m. fide Richards 7581) with numerous stems from the base, these branched only sparingly (at the bases of old inflorescences), the branches also stiffly erect, brownish with a dense pubescence of greyish antrorse hairs about 0.2 mm. long.. Leaf-blades lanceolate, 6–8(–10, or –17 fide one author) mm. long, 3–4 mm. wide (but because of the rolling back of the margins appearing only 2–3 mm. wide), acute and mucronulate, very firm to coriaceous, above dark, glabrous, shiny and somewhat sculpted near the margins, beneath white tomentulose; petiole ± 1 mm. long.. Heads terminal, 3–7-flowered, ± 1 cm. thick at anthesis, ± 2 cm. thick in fruit.. Bracts densely white-woolly and about as long as the fruit.. Flowers 4–5 mm. long including the hairs.. Cup and sepals uniformly externally pubescent with white hairs ± 1–5 mm. long (or the cup less pubescent in the Madagascar populations).. Cup elongated ± 1 mm. beyond the ovary.. Sepals ± 1 mm. long.. Petals oblanceolate, ± 0.4 mm. long, nearly glabrous.. Fruit 6–7 mm. long, 4–5 mm. thick, sparsely villous, pinkish when not quite mature.. Fig. 3.
Home