Phylica salteri Pillans

A moderately branched, rather rigid shrub, about 40 cm high, with ascending, wiry branches and velvety pubescent branchlets. Leaves closely set, about 1.2 cm long: lamina erect-spreading, incurved, lanceolate, callus-acute, rounded at base, with revolute margins covering most of the lower surface; upper surface smooth except for the presence of scattered, well spaced, prominent tubercles, each at first bearing a long, grey hair: petioles about 1.5 mm long, stout, at first villous. Capitula solitary or clustered on short branchlets, 6-8 mm wide, hemisphaeric, surrounded by many leaves. Bracts of the outer flowers about 8 mm long, lanceolate, villous, with leafy tips; bracts of the inner flowers about 6 mm long, linear, villous. Bracteoles absent. Flowers distinctly stipitate, 4 mm long, constricted between the tube and ovary: calyx-tube 1.25-1.5 mm deep, cyathiform, with long, hyaline, caducous hairs on the outer surface, lined with a thin disc at the base: sepals 1.5 mm long, lanceolate, often much tapered from about the middle upwards, flattened on the lower half of the inner surface, convex on the upper, persistently grey-villous on the outer surface except at the glabrous base. Petals inserted half way up the tube, scarcely 0.75 mm long: lamina rotundate-ovate, deeply cucullate: claw scarcely half as long, narrowly linear. Anthers cordate, 1-celled. Ovary fusiform, bearing long, caducous hairs. Style stout, together with the small stigma scarcely 0-5 mm long. Fruit about 5 mm long, widely obovate, with 3 well marked longitudinal furrows, topped by a small calyx-area.