Phylica keetii Pillans

A much branched, wiry shrub, about 40 cm high. Branchlets slender, minutely and sparsely pubescent and silky-villous. Leaves closely set, 4-5 mm long: lamina at first erect-spreading, soon spreading, mostly somewhat incurved, narrowly linear or acicular, semiterete, rounded at base, with closely revolute margins covering the lower surface; upper surface smooth and glabrous, with well-spaced tubercles and at first pilose on the margins: petiole about 1 mm long, ascending. Capitula 5-8 mm wide, widely rounded over the upper surface, surrounded by a few leaves and outer foliaceous bracts. Bracts of the inner flowers 3-4 mm long, acicular, villous on the outer surface, plumose at the apex. Bracteoles absent. Flowers 3 mm long, on a glabrous stipe, covered outside with white, woolly hairs: calyx-tube 0.75 mm deep, cyathiform: sepals 1 mm long, ovate, acuminate, spreading from about the middle, angular-convex on the upper half of the inner surface, with a short and sparse beard at the base of the convex portion. Petals inserted on the upper half of the tube, 0.5 mm long: lamina rotundate, cucullate: claw about half as long, linear. Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary narrowly turbinate, separated from the tube by a constriction. Style together with the small, 3-lobed stigma scarcely 0.5 mm long, encircled by an annulus. Fruit 3 mm long, obovate, slightly ridged longitudinally, very sparsely pubescent, red-brown.