Phylica leipoldtii Pillans

A moderately branched shrub, about 50 cm high, with wiry, ascending branches. Branchlets slender, velvety-pubescent and sparsely pilose. Leaves closely set, 1-1.5 cm long: lamina erect-spreading, slightly incurved, linear, obtuse or tipped with an acute callus, rounded at base, semiterete, with closely revolute margins covering the lower surface or almost so; upper surface minutely scabrid, clothed with short, adpressed, persistent pubescence, pilose on the margins: petiole 1.5-2 mm long. Capitula solitary, 1-1.5 cm wide, hemisphaeric, surrounded by many densely pilose leaves. Bracts 9-10 mm long, narrowly linear, plumose. Bracteoles absent. Flowers subsessile, 8-9 mm long, densely silky-villous and shortly tomentose on the outer surface, constricted between the tube and the ovary: calyx-tube about 2 mm deep, narrowly cyathiform, glabrous within: sepals about 3 mm long, lanceolate, acuminate, flattened at the base, sharply convex above, with a long beard on the middle portion of the lower half extending into the sinuses. Petals absent. Stamens inserted on the lower half of the tube. Anthers 1-celled. Ovary turbinate. Style 1.5 mm long, columnar, encircled at base by a small annulus. Stigma conical. Fruit 5 mm long, rotundate, pubescent and villous, red-brown, with a very small calyx-base upon the summit.