Phylica stenantha Pillans

A low shrub with ascending, wry branches. Branchlets slender, clothed with a mixture of short woolly and straight pubescence. Leaves for the most part closely set, 5-8 mm long: lamina erect-spreading, linear, obtuse, cordate at base, somewhat incurved, laterally compressed at the apex, with closely revolute margins covering the lower surface; upper surface smooth, with deciduous, grey hairs on the margins and a tuft at the apex: petiole very short. Capitula solitary, about 1 cm wide, hemisphaeric, surrounded at base by many leaves having the petiole much enlarged and the lamina reduced. Bracts and the two bracteoles similar, about 3 mm long, acicular, glabrous except for a tuft of white hairs at the apex. Flowers stipitate, about 3-5 mm long, clothed outside with long, white, caducous hairs: calyx-tube 1 mm deep, narrowly urceolate: sepals 1.5 mm long, lanceolate, acuminate, rounded on the inner surface, with pubescence on the lower half and a tuft of long hairs behind the apex. Petals inserted at the mouth of the tube, 0.5 mm long, abruptly incurved: lamina ovate, obtuse, cucullate, fimbrillate along the upper margins: claw half as long, cuneate. Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary very narrowly obconic. Style scarcely 0.5 mm long, trigonal. Stigma entire. Fruit 4 mm long, rotundate, glabrous, with 3 longitudinal furrows and a small calyx-area.