Botanical Name / Eriocaulon ceylanicum K rn.

Perennial forming dense tussock; stems shortly elongating with age, not exceeding 4 cm long; leaves narrowly linear up to 13 cm long, 0.5—2 mm wide, opaque, thick, smooth, obtuse and apiculate. Scapes solitary in each leaf-cluster, well exceeding the leaves, (10—)15—45 cm high, 0.7—1 mm in diameter, 6—7-ribbed; sheaths expanded at the mouth, obliquely slit, acute. Capitulum hemispherical becoming depressed-globose, 8—10 mm wide, pure white or greyish tinged, with prominently protruded white-hairy petals especially the outer, sometimes forming a peripheral fringe; involucral bracts broadly obovate, slightly shorter than the capitulum width, scarious becoming subcoriaceous towards the base, straw-coloured occasionally flushed pale grey, reflexing at maturity, the inner shortly and sparsely pilose on the margins with a white-papillose patch on the back; floral bracts oblanceolate, concave, scarious, pallid or grey, acute, densely white-papillose upwards; receptacle densely villous. Flowers 3-merous, their arrangement variable but often the large peripheral flowers female. Male flowers (3—)3.8—4.8 mm long; calyx grey, sepals connate below, oblanceolate-oblong, laterals navicular, the median narrower and flat, obtuse, white-papillose upwards; petals white-papillose, strongly dimorphic, the median much elongated, extended beyond the floral bracts, 2 remaining petals small, included within the calyx; anthers black. Female flowers: sepals free, otherwise resembling those of the male flowers; petals spathulate, pallid, strongly dimorphic, the median large and conspicuous like the enlarged male petal, 2 smaller papillose at the tip, pilose on the inner blade with spreading septate hairs. Seeds 0.7—0.8 mm long, broadly ellipsoid, pale to mid brown. (FOC)

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