Phylica pubescens Aiton

A moderately branched shrub, up to 130 cm high, the wiry branches and rather slender branchlets hirsute with ascending, silky, grey or buff hairs. Leaves closely set on the younger parts, mostly 2.5-3.5 cm long: lamina erect-spreading, slightly curved outwards, lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, acute, rounded at base, with revolute margins covering about half of the lower surface, almost smooth or with minute, scattered tubercles upon the upper surface, at first pilose, becoming glabrous: petiole 1-3 mm long. Capitula usually solitary, 4-5 cm wide including the bracts, about 2 cm high, conical in the centre, subtended by many villous leaves. Bracts 2-3 cm long, erect-spreading or spreading, somewhat recurved, linear-lanceolate, long-attenuate, villous, except on the base of the inner surface, with long grey or buff hairs. Bracteoles 2, 4-8 mm long, acicular, villous on the outer surface. Flowers 5-9 mm long, sessile, slightly curved, villous with long, ascending, grey hairs on the outer surface: calyx-tube 1-3 mm deep, cyathiform, slightly compressed dorsally, glabrous on the lower half within, pubescent on the upper, with a shallow cup-shaped disc: sepals 3-5 mm long, deltoid and pubescent in the lower half, thence attenuate, angular-convex and glabrescent. Petals inserted on the upper half of the tube, 0.5-0.75 mm long, absent from some flowers: lamina ovate or lanceolate-ovate, acute, concave on the inner side, with a few small hairs on the outer surface or glabrous: claw short, oblong. Anthers 1-celled. Ovary obconic. Style about 0.75 mm high, trigonous, columnar. Stigma divided into 3 small, erect lobes. Fruit 7-8 mm long, obovate-rotundate, obtusely 3-angled, thinly pilose, chestnut-brown, with a small slightly depressed area on the summit.

Can be grown by cuttings or seedlings.