Stoebe microphylla Dc.

Wiry, erect, much-branched shrubs, up to 0.35 m tall. Branches numerous; very slender and whip-like with rounded, almost club-shaped tips; secondary branches with a somewhat angled appearance, developing from below the synflorescence of the previous season, somewhat hairy, mostly arachnoid; main branches up to 2.5 mm in diam., flowering branches up to 0.5 mm in diam. Leaves minute, lanceolate, 4 mm long, tightly adpressed, not overlapping on mature stems; tips acute; adaxially tomentose; abaxially arachnoid. Synflorescences of many capitula in terminal, globose heads, up to 15 mm in diam. Capitula homogamous, discoid, 1-flowered. Receptacle reduced to an inflated branch tip with short stalk-like outgrowths. Involucral bracts 6-10; outermost foliaceous, about half the length of innermost; innermost 5.0-5.5 mm long, milky-white in the upper part, often with a pinkish tinge in lower half, narrow, acuminate with blunt tips, as long as the florets. Florets bisexual; plum-red; corolla lobes narrow, erect, opening cup-like with recurved tips. Stamens 5, apical appendages lanceolate, basally frilly-tailed. Style bifid, base swollen. Nectaries present. Cypselas narrow cylindrical, yellowish, 2 mm long, smooth with short adpressed or ascending hairs in upper part below the annulus, cells well defined with a wart-like surface texture under high magnification; annulus and carpopodium well developed. Pappus setae 12-16, slightly fused at the base, as long as the corolla tube; barbed in lower third, plumose in upper part, plumes spreading, rigid, about one fifth as long as the setae, tips acute.