Phylica subulifolia Pillans

A much branched wiry shrub about 50 cm high. Branchlets slender, clothed with short, grey tomentum. Leaves closely set, 3-5 mm long: lamina subulate, deeply cordate and distinctly widest at base, with the revolute margins completely covering the lower surface, pustulate and, at first, pilose over the entire upper surface, at length glabrous: petiole short, almost hidden. Capitula solitary, about 5 mm wide, hemisphaeric, subtended by several leaves with enlarged petioles. Bracts about 3 mm long, linear-lanceolate, dorsally villous. Bracteoles 2, about 2 mm long, linear. Flowers sessile, about 2.75 mm long: tube 0.75 mm deep, cyathiform, glabrous: sepals 1 mm long, ovate, acutely convex on the upper half, otherwise flat, densely clothed with white, woolly hairs on the outer surface. Petals inserted at the middle of the tube, 0.75 mm long; lamina rotundate, cucullate; claw half as long, cuneate. Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary obconic, glabrous. Stigma shortly 3-lobed, on a trigonous style scarcely 0.5 mm long. Fruit about 4 mm long, rotundate, with 3 longitudinal furrows, glabrous, surmounted by a narrow calyx-base.