Haplocarpha rueppelii

There are many thick, almost tuberous roots, emerging from a rootstock of 1–2 cm in diameter creeping at the soil surface. The shiny, somewhat fleshy green leaves have a short leaf stalk that may have spiderweb-like hairs at their base. The leaf blade varies between almost round, ovate, or longish, diamond or inverted egg-shaped, 2–13 cm long, 1–7½ cm wide, with the base gradually narrowing, rounded or hart-shaped, the margin entire to scalloped, with shallow irregular teeth, saw-shaped or almost lobed, the leaf tip pointy, blunt or rounded and the teeth may be ending in a soft spine. The upper leaf surface with few or may hairs or even hairy like a spiderweb, the lower leaf surface with densely felty beneath with spiderweb hairs.[2]

The stalk of the flowerhead is pinkish in color, somewhat flattened, with shallow wings, 1–11 cm long, widest at the clasping base, up to 8 mm wide. Usually every rosette carries several slender, felty, pinkish, leafless, erect scapes of up to 13 cm, sometimes swollen beneath the single flower head. Each flowerhead is 1½–5 cm in diameter. The involucre consists of two or three, sometimes four worls of linear to narrowly ovate or inverted egg-shaped bracts, each 4–12 mm long and 1–3 mm wide, with papery margins, covered with many of few hairs. The common base of the florets (called receptacle) is 3–4 mm across, has the shape of a shallow, slightly hollowed dome, which may or may not carry a scale at the foot of each floret.[2]

Along the outside are eight to sixteen spreading yellow ray florets, which are ovate, elliptic or egg-shaped, although about ⅛ is tube-shaped. Each ray floret is 1–2½ cm long, 2–6 mm wide, entire or sometimes with mostly one to three teeth at the tip and mostly four or five veins, hairless or with scattered multicellular hairs on the lower surface. In the centre of the flowerhead are mostly between twenty and forty (sometimes as few as eleven) yellow and urn-shaped disk florets, of 3½–7 mm long, which divide into five triangular lobes, ⅓ of the length of the floret, that spread or bend down, and do not have hair.[2]

The one-seeded indehiscent fruits are not embedded in the common base of the florets receptacle, is inverted cone-shaped or oblong, has three or four ribs, is at least 3 mm long, and half as wide, with a smooth surface or with tiny wrinkles and hairless. At the tip is one row of scales (the pappus) of ½–1 mm long, that are free in the outer florets, but merged at their foot in disc florets. These scales are split into twelve to fifteen standing, awl-shaped lobes, with a long, narrow tip, divided in side-lobes and without hair.[2]

The upper leaf surface of plants of Haplocarpha rueppellii growing on Mount Elgon are consistently densely covered in multicellular hairs. Elsewhere, hairiness varies between specimens in the same population. Scholars therefore are reluctant to assign the form from Mount Elgon to a variety different from the typical form.[2]

Comparison of DNA of species assigned to the subtribe Arctotidinae has cast doubt on the monophyly of the genus Haplocarpha. The type species, H. lanata, seems most related to H. lyrata and Arctoteca calundula. H. rueppellii and H. nervosa on the other hand appear to be the first branch to split from the remaining species in the subtribe. If this finding is robust, reinstatement of Landtia has been suggested, meaning our species would have to be called Landtia rueppellii.[3]