Thesium unyikense Engl.

Perennial herb; rootstock woody, thickly disk-shaped, 2–4 cm across, crowned with very many short closely scaly vegetative buds that elongate into stems; buds 3–5 mm long, with brown triangular scales 1–2 mm long; stems grey-green, numerous, erect or decumbent, 5–40 cm tall, soon fastigiately branched, branches irregularly cymose, ascending at angle of ± 45°, seldom more than 5 cm long; ribs low and broad, decurrent from scale leaves, often minutely pustulate.. Leaves all reduced to scales, those at extreme base of stem triangular-lanceolate, 1.5–3 mm long, those subtending branches lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate, 1.5–6x0.8–1.6 mm, cuspidate, thick-textured, margins membranous, ciliolate.. Flowers sessile, initially solitary at tips of nude peduncles ± 4–30 mm long (measured from axil of bract to first flower), often 2 peduncles from 1 axil, later overtopped by 1 or occasionally 2 branches arising immediately or shortly below flower, branch either nude and terminating in a flower, or bracteate, terminating in a flower and with a floral bud in the axil of each bract; this branching may be repeated again; bracts ± 5, forming an involucre below the flower, lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate, 1–2x0.5–1 mm, acuminate to cuspidate, margins ciliolate.. Perianth yellow-green outside, white to cream inside; tube (0.6–)0.8–1.2 mm long, external glands ellipsoid, whitish, sometimes not very evident; lobes oblong-lanceolate, 1–1.8 mm long, obtuse, margins inflexed, ± erose; hood 0.25–0.3 mm long.. Stamens inserted at base of perianth lobes; filaments 0.25–0.5 mm long, hidden by anthers; anthers 0.5–0.8 mm long.. Style 1–2 mm long; stigma reaching nearly to top of perianth lobes.. Fruit buff to pale brown, ellipsoid to ovoid-globose, 2.5–3 mm long, 2.5–2.75 mm in diameter, strongly ribbed and reticulate.. Fig. 1/13–15 (page 4).