Celmisia armstrongii

Detailed description

Moderately stout woody-based herb with branchlets arising from a multicipital stock, usually hidden; living leaves in rosettes at the tips of branchlets, the whole forming irregular carpets, or less often clusters of 1-8 rosettes; leaf sheaths densely imbricate and compacted, forming a pseudo-stem. Leaf lamina 120-400 × l0-20 mm, coriaceous, erect when young but soon becoming patent, linear oblong; upper surface sulcate, bronze-green with a conspicuous orange-brown strip along the midrib, somewhat paler immediately outside this, pellicle bronze-yellow, obvious; lower surface densely covered in glistening appressed tomentum, midrib prominent; tip acute; margins entire, conspicuously recurved; base cuneate, petiole short. Sheath up to 80 × 25 mm, yellowish, clad in floccose white hairs. Scape densely clad in floccose white hairs, not as stout as in preceding species, up to 35 cm long; bracts several in upper half, erect, up to 60 mm long; monocephalous. Ray florets 100-120, ligulate, the limb narrow linear, white. Disc florets c.130, 7-8 mm long, funneliform, yellow, the tube sparsely eglandular biseriate hairy. Achenes fusiform to cylindric, grooved, 4-5 mm long, moderately to densely hairy; hairs short, appressed, bifid. Pappus unequal, up to 8 mm long, of c.40 barbellate bristles.