Phylica incurvata Pillans

A much branched, wiry shrub, about 30 cm high. Branchlets slender, silky pubescent. Leaves 2-2.5 mm long: lamina ascending, distinctly incurved, with the apex touching the stem or leaf above, oblong-lanceolate, obtuse, tipped with a subacute callus, cordate at base, with closely revolute margins covering the lower surface; upper surface smooth or wrinkled, glabrous except for a deciduous tuft of hairs at the apex: petiole very short. Capitula solitary, 3-5 mm wide, hemisphaeric, surrounded at base by a few short leaves and outer bracts. Bracts of the inner flowers 1.25-1.5 mm long, linear, subacute, densely villous on the upper half of the outer surface. Bracteoles 2, shorter, villous. Flowers 1.75-2 mm long, on a persistently villous stipe: calyx-tube broadly cyathiform, covered outside with ascending, deciduous, grey hairs: sepals scarcely 0.75 mm long, deltoid-ovate, acute, covered outside with spreading, white hairs, keeled on the upper half of the inner surface. Petals inserted at the mouth of the tube, 0.5 mm long: lamina orbicular, cucullate: claw oblong-cuneate, slightly longer. Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary obconic, covered with long, ascending, deciduous hairs. Style and stigma together scarcely 0.5 mm long, columnar.