Helichrysum monticola

The flowerheads of Helichrysum monticola grow solitary at stem tips. The flowerhead has about ten rows of regularly overlapping or imbricate involucral bracts. These bracts have their lower parts hidden behind the bracts of the adjacent row, presenting just the tops of each row to an observer. They taper to acute tips and radiate outwards. In the centre of the flowerhead is the familiar yellow disc formed by many tiny individual florets; the typical feature of so many flowers in the Asteraceae family.

In general, these neat white or coloured rows of involucral bracts on the various kinds of everlasting flowers are their chief attraction. In this species the pretty bracts are white and glossy, sometimes tinged with pink or crimson at the base inside the cup of the flowerhead. Flowering happens in summer. The fruit, an achene of 1,5 mm long is hairy with a bristly pappus at one end.

This plant was photographed during January (JSTOR; iSpot).