Friday, March 8, 2013

Botany picture #45: Helichrysum arenarium

The paper daisies (Gnaphalieae) comprise about half of the ca 1,000 native species of daisies (Asteraceae) in Australia. Until about 30 years ago, many of the species were placed in the then massive genus Helichrysum but then it turned out that they were only distantly related to the real Helichrysum species from Africa and Eurasia. Since then, they have been segregated into numerous mostly small genera. Because I am currently conducting research on some of those Australian plants formerly erroneously placed in Helichrysum and have just produced the first results, my thoughts are also drawn to the "real thing". Unfortunately, I have a picture of only one of the species, H. arenarium, Germany, 2007. Gnaphalieae are mostly southern hemispheric so you find very few of them in Europe.

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