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Nilgiri Everlasting
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Nilgiri Everlasting
ative Photo: S. Jeevith
Common name: Nilgiri Everlasting, White Everlasting
Botanical name: Helichrysum wightii    Family: Asteraceae (Sunflower family)

Nilgiri Everlasting is an interesting species of paper daisy which comes from South India. It is a herb upto 30 cm tall, usually branched; stems stout, covered with somewhat rusty brown-white, appressed, dense woolly velvety hairs. Leaves of flowerless branches are clustered, linear-lanceshaped, 3-6 x 0.3-0.7 cm; those of the flowering branches alternate, linear, base nearly stem-clasping, pointed and slightly recurved at tip, margins recurved, 1.4-4 x 0.2-0.6 cm; thick, densely woolly on both surfaces; nerves 3-5, prominent, closely set, parallel raised on lower surface, stalkless. Flowers-heads are borne in subspherical, corymbose clusters, about 2 mm across; flower-cluster-stalk about 2 mm long, densely clothed with ferrungineous woolly growth. Involucral bracts scarious, 3-4-seriate; of the outermost whorl elliptic, suffused with charred brown, specially towards the lower end, covered with dense woolly pubescence. Ray florets with thread-like flower, about 1.8 mm long, minutely toothed. Disc florets with flower about 2 mm long, 4-5-toothed. Achenes about 0.3 mm long, round, subcompressed, papillose. Pappus hairs white, minutely bristly. Nilgiri Everlasting is endemic to Western Ghats. Flowering: November-April.

Identification credit: S. Jeevith Photographed in The Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu.

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