Phylica pauciflora Pillans

A much branched shrub, about 50 cm high, with wiry, ascending branches. Branchlets slender, clothed with minute tomentum and short, spreading pubescence. Leaves closely set, 4-5.5 mm long: lamina ascending or erect-spreading, linear, obtuse, subcordate at base, straight, semiterete, with closely revolute margins covering the lower surface; upper surface closely tubercled, at first softly pubescent, becoming glabrous: petiole 0.5 mm long. Capitula solitary, about 4 mm wide, hemisphaeric, few-flowered, surrounded by several leaves and the outer foliaceous bracts. Bracts of the inner flowers about 2.5 mm long, elliptic, acute, navicular, silky-villous on both sides. Bracteoles 2, about 1.5 mm long, acicular, dorsally villous. Flowers 2-2.5 mm long, on a short, villous stipe: calyx-tube 0.75 mm deep, broadly cyathiform, glabrous, with an inconspicuous disc lining the sides up to the middle: sepals 1 mm long, deltoid-ovate, acute, flattened at the base, angular-convex above, densely tomentose on the outer surface. Petals inserted on the upper half of the tube, 0.5 mm long: lamina ovate, acute, concave, subcucullate above the middle: claw about half as long, cuneate. Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary turbinate, glabrous. Stigma subsessile, pulvinate.