Phylica nodosa Pillans

A much branched shrub about 120 cm high, rigid in the lower parts, with ascending, wiry branches clothed with spreading, grey pubescence, and swollen at the positions of previous capitula. Leaves closely set, mostly 1-1.4 cm long: lamina erect-spreading, lanceolate, very acute, cordate at base, with revolute margins covering about half of the lower surface; upper surface convex, somewhat pustulate and, at first, villous on the margins: petioles 2 mm long, unusually compressed, mostly nude or almost so at maturity. Capitula solitary, 8-10 mm wide, hemisphaeric, subtended by many almost open-backed leaves. Bracts 4-5 mm long, oblanceolate, dorsally grey-villous. Bracteoles 2, 3-4 mm long, linear, dorsally villous. Flowers 4-4.5 mm long, on a villous stipe: calyx-tube about 1.5 mm deep, cyathiform, glabrous except for pubescence around the upper half outside: sepals 1.5 mm long, slightly recurved, lanceolate, convex on the upper surface, densely clothed with long, white, almost straight hairs on the outer surface. Petals inserted at the middle of the tube, 0.75 mm long: lamina calyptriform: claw about as long, narrowly linear. Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary narrowly obconic, glabrous. Stigma sessile, pulvinate.