Selago glutinosa

Selago glutinosa, sometimes called the aarbossie (little vein bush) or denneblaar-aarbossie (pine leaf little vein bush) in Afrikaans, is an erect to rounded shrublet growing hairy branches to heights from 60 cm to 80 cm.

The often sticky and fleshy leaves are needle-like to cylindrical. They spiral and spread up the stems and are from 5 mm to 15 mm long.

The small, white flowers grow at stem-tips in dense, cylindrical spikes. There is a small, five-lobed calyx below the two-lipped and five-lobed, spreading corolla that is tubular at its base. The corolla is 5 mm in diameter.

Exserted stamens in picture show straight, white filaments and small, brownish anthers. The flowers are strongly fragrant. Flowering happens from before midwinter to early summer, peaking early in spring.

The species is distributed inland in the west of the Western Cape and southwest of the Northern Cape.

The habitat is sandstone and granite fynbos and karoid scrub slopes in semi-arid, mountainous places. The species is not considered threatened in habitat early in the twenty first century (Manning, 2007; Manning and Goldblatt, 1997; iNaturalist; JSTOR; http://redlist.sanbi.org).