Phylica retorta Pillans

A moderately branched shrub, about 40 cm high, with ascending, wiry branches. Branchlets rather slender, clothed with subadpressed, silky pubescence and sparsely villous. Leaves 7-10 mm long: lamina ascending or erect-spreading, mostly straight, linear, obtuse, rounded at base, semiterete, with closely revolute margins covering the lower surface; upper surface for the most part minutely tubercled and pubescent, at length glabrous: petiole 1-1.5 mm long. Capitula 1-1.5 cm wide, solitary, hemisphaeric, comparatively few-flowered and lax, surrounded at base by many leaves. Bracts 5-6 mm long, linear, attenuate, villous on the outer surface. Bracteoles 2.2-3 mm long, acicular, villous. Flowers 7-8 mm long, stipitate, distinctly constricted between the tube and the ovary: calyx-tube, 3.5-4 mm deep, ampullaceous, with short pubescence on the inner surface for the most part arranged in vertical rows, covered on the outside with ascending, grej7 pubescence: sepals 2 mm long, lanceolate, acute, flattened and bearded on the lower half, sharply convex on the upper, shortly pubescent on the outer surface. Petals absent. Stamens inserted on the lower half of the tube: Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary obconic, densely pubescent. Style 2 mm long, columnar. Stigma narrow7, 3 lobed. Fruit stipitate, 6 mm long, rotundate, pubescent, with a small calyx-base.