Helichrysum monticola flowerheads

The flowerheads of Helichrysum monticola grow in clusters on erect stems, each at the tip of a stem branch. 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 outside it, exposing only the tops of the dense rows to the observer. The bracts radiate outwards, tapering to acute tips. The bracts are usually white, but some plants have pinkish or crimson rings at the bases of the insides of the open inner bracts around the disc of florets. In the centre of the flowerhead is the familiar yellow disc, formed by numerous, tiny florets, the typical feature of so many flowerheads in the Asteraceae family.

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 (Manning, 2009; iNaturalist; iSpot; JSTOR).