Phylica lanata Pillans

A much branched shrub, about 60 cm high, rigid at base, with wiry branches. Branchlets slender, clothed with short, grey tomentum. Leaves closely set, 4-6 mm long: lamina erect-spreading or ascending, slightly incurved, lanceolate, obtuse or apiculate, subcordate at base, with closely revolute margins covering the lower surface; upper surface minutely and closely tubercled, at first pubescent: petiole very short. Capitula solitary or clustered, 5-8 mm wide, orbicular or hemisphaeric, few-flowered, subtended by several leaves. Bracts of the inner flowers about 3 mm long, oblong, foliaceous in the upper half, villous on both sides. Bracteoles 2, sometimes absent, linear, entirely villous. Flowers 2.5-2.75 mm long, on a very short, silky-villous stipe, with a dense covering of white, woolly hair on the outside: calyx-tube about 0.5 mm deep, broadly cyathiform, lined with a rather conspicuous, fleshy disc: sepals about 1 mm long, deltoid-ovate, acute, heeled down the upper half. Petals inserted at the mouth of the tube, scarcely 0.75 mm long: lamina rotundate-cordate, cucullate: claw almost as long, cuneate. Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary obconic. Style very short, broadly conical. Stigma composed of 3 rounded lobes, scarcely reaching up to the bases of the petals. Fruit about 5 mm long, rotundate, sparsely tomentose, with a small calyx-base on the summit.