Stoebe alopecuroides Less.

Robust, erect, usually single-stemmed shrub, up to 1.8 m tall. Branches covered with rather shaggy hairs; very densely leafy; secondary branches often candelabrum-like. Brachyblasts numerous, generally 10-30 mm long, spreading or ascending. Leaves filiform, ericoid, spirally twisted, usually shorter than 10 mm; abaxial surface glabrous or canescent; adaxial surface woolly; tips mucronate. Synflorescences thick, finger-like, terminal spikes (20-)50-150 x 15-20 mm, often interspersed with leaves or short brachyblasts. Capitula homogamous, discoid, 1-flowered, in very dense arrangements. Receptacle reduced to short stalks on an elongated flowering stem. Involucral bracts 13; outer much shorter than the inner, partly foliaceous, tomentose, tips obtuse; inner bracts scarious and brown, glabrous or very sparsely hairy, tips acuminate. Florets bisexual, white, corolla well developed; corolla lobes triangular, spreading. Style bifid, branches almost reaching the tips of the corolla lobes at maturity; base not swollen. Nectaries absent. Cypselas with 10 well-marked ribs, tomentose, with short hairs adpressed in lower half, spreading in upper half; hairs often adpressed in smaller bundles along the ribs; annulus well developed, a ring of fused hairs. Pappus setae 15-19; free; shaft narrow, terete, bare in lower 1/3, plumose in upper part; plumes very fine, up to 1/4 the length of the setae, lower plumes reflexed, central ones spreading horizontally, upper ones ascending; slightly longer than the corolla tube, touching the corolla lobes.