Phylica variabilis Pillans

Much branched, dense shrub about 60 cm high, rigid in its lower parts, with ascending branches. Branchlets slender, densely pubescent with spreading hairs. Leaves crowded, 0.7-1.2 cm long: lamina erect-spreading, lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, apiculate, widely rounded at base, with revolute margins covering about half or less of the lower surface; upper surface minutely tuberculate-scabrid and at first villous on the margins and midrib, elsewhere smooth and glabrous; lower surface white-tomentose, frequently with evident lateral nerves: petiole 1.5-2 mm long. Capitula solitary or clustered, 0.5-1 cm wide, hemisphaeric, surrounded at base by a few leaves and leafy bracts. Bracts of the inner flowers about 2 mm long, linear, villous. Bracteoles 2, acicular, villous. Flowers stipitate, 2.5-3 mm long: calyx-tube scarcely 0.5 mm long, widely cyathiform, glabrous, with a conspicuous, fleshy disc having its upper margin free: sepals 1-1.25 mm long, ovate, acute, villous on the outer surface; inner surface flattened in the lower half except for a small keel, gibbous at the apex. Petals inserted at the mouth of the tube and attached to the margin of the disc: lamina orbicular, cucullate: claw about as long, cuneate. Anthers reniform, 1-celled. Ovary narrowly obconic, glabrous. Style together with the depressed stigma 0.5 mm long.