Celmisia monroi

Detailed description

Stout woody-based herb with branchlets arising from a multicipital stock, usually hidden; living leaves in large rosettes at the tips of branchlets, the whole plant forming patches of few to many rosettes; leaf sheaths densely imbricate and compacted, forming a pseudo-stem. Leaf lamina 120-550 × 10-32 mm, coriaceous, stiff and erect, lanceolate to oblong; upper surface sulcate, concolorous, somewhat rugose in some plants, dark green but generally masked by a thick lead-coloured, dull pellicle which is sometimes partly deciduous on older leaves; lower surface densely covered in glistening appressed tomentum, midrib moderately prominent; tip acute; margins entire, usually slightly recurved; base gradually narrowed to the petiole. Petiole up to 30 mm long. Sheath up to 80-200 × 20 mm, greenish or rarely pale purple, clad in floccose white hairs. Scape densely clad in floccose white hairs, stout, up to 350 mm long; bracts very numerous, erect, usually up to 60 mm long and revolute, sometimes lowest bracts much larger and foliaceous; monocephalous. Ray florets 80-100, ligulate, the limb narrow-linear, white. Disc florets c.250, 8-10 mm long, funneliform, yellow, tube with sparse long, eglandular biseriate hairs at base. Achene fusiform-cylindric, strongly grooved, 3-8 mm long, usually slightly hairy; hairs short, appressed, bifid. Pappus unequal, 6-10 mm long, of c.50 barbellate bristles.