years of age. The leaves are linear and needle-like, ending in a piercingly sharp point. They point upwards (are ascending) and/or secund. The leaves are 1mm wide and in length, glabrous, slightly grooved or channelled, and bright green in colour. The top side of the leaf is minutely, but prominently, ribbed (costate). It blooms in the early winter, with the peak in May to July, but potentially from May to September. The inflorescences are specialised structures called pseudanthia, also known simply as flower heads, containing hundred of reduced flowers, called florets. The flower heads are sessile. The flower heads are cup-shaped, dropping and pendulous, coloured red, in length, and in diameter. The flower heads are surrounded by a series of seven rows of petal or scale-like 'involucral bracts'. These bracts are all glabrous. The lowest outer bracts grow into long, leafy structures resembling the leaves. The outer bracts are ovate, acuminate, 15 to 20mm long and can end either in a sharp point or with a rounded tip. The inner bracts are longer than the actual florets. They are oblong and slightly concave. It is monoecious, both sexes occur in each flower. The petals and sepals of the florets are fused into a tube-like, dilated, 16.9mm long perianth-sheath. This sheath is scarious (dry, thin, membranous), having three keels and seven veins on the lower part. The lower part is glabrous, but the upper is covered in reddish setulose (bristly) hairs. The sheath has a lip which is 5.6mm long. This lip has three keels, is setose (densely bristly) on the lower part and ends with three teeth, all three teeth roughly or almost the same length (0.53mm). All of the stamens are fertile. The filament is 0.53mm long, dilated and concave. The anthers are oblong-linear and 3.5mm long. The apical glands are 0.28 in length, ovate in shape, with a somewhat sharp tip (subacute), and somewhat swollen on the inner face. The ovary is 2.1mm long, obovate-oblong in shape, and covered in long, reddish-yellow hairs. It has hypogynous scales which are 1mm in length and oval-oblong in shape. The style is long, broadened and very much compressed (flat) for about 6.4mm from the base, and after this portion becoming very constricted, subulate and bending strongly -this slender portion is glabrous and arches inward, but with an oblique angle, thus not towards the centre of the flower head but aiming somewhat