Stoebe leucocephala Dc.

Erect or diffuse shrubs or subshrubs, single or multi-stemmed, up to 1 m tall. Branches and leaves canescent. Leaves up to 15 mm long, variable: either narrow, linear, involute, twisted, curved inwards, often pigtail-like, or shorter and wider, with obtuse tips, twisted, ascending, both surfaces covered with adpressed hairs; woolly hairy when young; abaxial surface becoming glabrous with age; pleasantly aromatic. Synflorescences of many capitula very tightly massed in round, terminal heads. Capitula homogamous, discoid, 1-flowered. Receptacle reduced to short stalks on a swollen globose base. Involucral bracts white, opaque, 12; outer 3 bracts short, about half the length of the inner bracts, upper part leafy; inner bracts milky white, up to 6.0 x 0.7 mm, narrowly lanceolate; tips rounded to acute. Florets bisexual, corolla a deep pink to plum-red; corolla lobes narrow, erect, less than one third the length of the tube, inner margins with a row of distinct, large, inflated cells. Stamens 5; apical appendage lanceolate, basally tailed. Style bifid, somewhat swollen at the base. Nectaries present. Cypselas white, silky-hairy, hairs very thin, long, flexible, adpressed, twisted, tips very fine, acuminate; annulus a distinct rim of cypsela hairs. Pappus setae 20-24, slightly fused at the base; plumose from the base; plumes adpressed, very short at the base becoming progressively longer upwards, slightly tufted at the tips.