Helichrysum tenuifolium

Helichrysum tenuifolium is a much-branched, rounded shrub reaching about 2 m in height and growing even wider. Lower branches lose their leaves, their surfaces rough from leaf scars.

The small leaves are dense around the stem-tips. They are long and narrow, the bases partly stem-clasping, tapering to acutely pointed, hooked tips with rolled under margins. The upper surfaces are green to grey, the lower surfaces densely white woolly. 

Flat-topped to shallowly dome-shaped clusters of ten to twenty yellow to orange, bell-shaped flowerheads are compact at stem-tips during bloomtime. This happens late in spring and early in summer. A few rows of small, pale yellow, pointed and glossy involucral bracts surround the bulging, bright yellow discs of tiny florets of each head. 

The species distribution is in the KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg between Cathedral Peak and Giant's Castle, also in the Maluti Mountains of Lesotho. The photo was taken at Ramabantha in Lesotho.

The habitat is grassland in rocky gullies, along streambanks, in boulder beds, and on rocky outcrops at high elevations. The habitat population is deemed of least concern early in the twenty first century (Trauseld, 1969; iNaturalist; https://keys.lucidcentral.org; http://redlist.sanbi.org).