Cold-remedy everlasting

Helichrysum odoratissimum, known in southern Africa as imphepho or kooigoed, is an aromatic, woolly perennial herb in the family Asteraceae growing 30 to 80 centimetres tall, with much-branched, ascending stems densely clothed in silvery-white felted hairs and a strongly resinous, sweetly aromatic smell when crushed. The alternate, sessile leaves are linear-oblong to oblanceolate, 1.5 to 5 centimetres long, with revolute margins, dull green and finely pubescent above and white-tomentose beneath. Small, bright yellow flower heads about 4 to 6 millimetres across are crowded in dense, flat-topped terminal corymbs at the tips of the branches; each capitulum has an involucre of shiny, papery, golden-yellow bracts surrounding a few tubular disc florets without rays. The fruit is a tiny cypsela bearing a single ring of barbed white pappus bristles. The species is widespread across southern, eastern and tropical Africa on grassy hillsides, forest margins and disturbed open ground from sea level to 2700 metres.