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Electronic Flora of South Australia species Fact Sheet

Family: Asteraceae
Helichrysum pterochaetum

Citation: F. Muell., Rep. Babbage Exped. 1858 14 ( 1859).

Synonymy: Chrysocephalum pterochaetum F. Muell., Linnaea 25:416 (1852); Heliprerum pterochaetum (F. Muell.) Benth., Fl. Aust. 3:648 (1867).

Common name: Perennial sunray.

Description:
Rigid bushy perennial herb 15-40 cm tall and diam., or subshrub with a woody stock or lower woody branches; branches white-felty with somewhat matted woolly-cobwebby hairs; leaves linear to linear-oblanceolate, with recurved margins, a blunt apex and a broadly sessile base, mostly 1-3 cm long, 1-1.5 mm wide, glandular-scabrid on both sides, sometimes with scattered woolly hairs.

Capitula on short peduncles (to c. 10 mm) in subcorymbose clusters of 3-8 terminating long branchlets bearing reduced leaves, narrowly campanulate to obconical, 5-7 mm long and 5-6 mm diam.; involucral bracts 5- or 6-seriate, the inner ones longest, slightly exceeded by the florets, all scarious, translucent, stramineous, papillose, with a basal glandular-pubescent herbaceous mid-vein passing into a short claw, shortly ciliate with the cilia in length a fifth to a quarter of the width of the bracts; outer bracts with golden-brown to brown almost opaque tips; inner bracts with wholly scarious laminae.

Achenes obovoid-oblong, densely papillose; pappus bristles of bisexual florets 8-19, subplumose from the base where very shortly connate, barbellate towards the apex, of female florets lacking.

Published illustration: Cunningham et al. (1982) Plants of western New South Wales, p. 696, as Helipterum pterochaetum.

Distribution:  Occurs usually in sand among rocks, in or near dry creek beds, sandy gibber and rocky hillslopes.

  W.Aust.; N.T.; Qld; N.S.W.

Conservation status: native

Flowering time: much of the year but especially June — Oct.


SA Distribution Map based
on current data relating to
specimens held in the
State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: No text

Author: Not yet available


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