Description: Annual or perennial herbs.
Leaves alternate, cauline, crowded, entire.
Heads solitary on slender peduncles; heads hemispherical; involucral bracts multiseriate, stiff and scarious, the inner with white or coloured radiating laminas and slender terete stipes; receptacle flat, glabrous, naked. Florets numerous, bisexual. Corollas tubular below, narrow-campanulate above, actinomorphic. Anthers with firm filiform tails. Styles with apex deltoid.
Achenes ellipsoid, 2–3 mm high, glabrous, with translucent warty pericarp; pappus of several plumose bristles, persistent but eventually breaking shortly above base.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 6 species, endemic Australia. Australia: all States.
Text by Paul G. Wilson
Taxon concept: Key and some species information updated Sep 2016 by Louisa Murray based on R.J. Dennis and N.G. Walsh (2010) A revision of the Leucochrysum albicans (Asteraceae: Gnaphalieae) complex. Muelleria Vol 28(2): 122-135.
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Leaves spathulate to broad-obovate, densely woolly; margin flat; apex lacking an obvious mucro or callus tip; inner involucral bracts lanceolate to ovate, white, outer involucral bracts purplish to brown (especially apparent in early stages of capitulum development) | Leucochrysum alpinum |
| Leaves obovate to filiform, cobwebbed to cottony or glabrescent; margin gently recurved to tightly revolute, apex with short glabrous mucro or callus tip. Inner involucral bracts suborbicular to broad-ovate or ovate, lanceolate to elliptic, white or yellow | 2 |
| 2 | Annual herb; leaves lightly cobwebbed, obovate to oblancolate; inner involucral bracts suborbicular to broadly ovate, rounded or truncate at base of lamina, yellow | Leucochrysum molle |
| Perennial (although sometimes short-lived); leaves cottony or glabrescent, obovate to oblanceolate or linear to filiform; inner involucral bracts obovate to ovate to lanceolate, white or yellow
Back to 1 | 3 |
| 3 | Leaves filiform, glabrescent; margin tightly revolute; involucral bracts narrow-elliptic | Leucochrysum graminifolium |
| Leaves obovate to oblanceolate or linear, cottony; margin recurved to revolute; inner involucral bracts ovate to lanceolate, white or yellow
Back to 2 | Leucochrysum albicans |
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