Phylica plumigera Pillans

A sparsely branched shrub, about 40 cm high, with ascending, wiry branches. Branchlets slender, villous and shortly tomentose. Leaves very closely set, 0.7-1.5 cm long: lamina erect-spreading, linear, obtuse or tipped with an acute apiculus, rounded at base, semiterete, with closely revolute margins covering the lower surface, with scattered tubercles and at first pilose over the upper surface: petiole about 1 mm long. Capitula solitary, about 1.5 cm wide, hemisphaeric, surrounded by several series of strongly ciliate leaves. Bracts of the outer flowers about 1.5 cm long, acicular, recurved, plumose with white hairs, much overtopping the flowers. Bracts of the inner flowers about 1 cm long, setaceous, plumose, straight, not overtopping the flowers. Bracteoles of the outer flowers solitary, absent from the inner flowers. Flowers 7-9 mm long, on a well developed, villous stipe, covered outside with long, ascending, silky, grey hairs: calyx-tube 5-5.5 mm deep, tubular-obconic, tapered at base, slightly constricted at the mouth, glabrous within, purple on the upper half: sepals 1.25-1.5 mm long, deltoid, acuminate, considerably exceeded by the hairs on the outer surface; inner surface rounded-convex and minutely scabrid on the upper half, deltoid and flattened in the lower half, with a beard of straight, fulvous hairs at least 1 mm long dependent from the middle of the sepal. Petals absent. Stamens inserted on the upper half of the tube. Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary narrowly obconic. Style 2 mm long, slender. Stigma capitate.