There are also sparse, sunken, reversed egg-shaped glandular hairs of about 50 μm high, on both surfaces of the leaf consisting of about 5 flat cells, arranged like a pile of pancakes, these excrete essential oils, and appear as dots to the naked eye.

[3] Famatinanthus is similar to Aphyllocladus, and grows in comparable environments, but can be distinguished by the unribbed cylindrical branches without secretory cavities, that retain their opposite leaves, multi-storied T-shaped hairs, florets with cream corollas, pointy anther tips, approximately globular pollen, and cypselas with bristles.

Aphyllocladus has early shedded alternate leaves, long, simple, two to three celled flagellate hairs, lilac to purple corollas, blunt anther tips, pollen that is higher than wide, and long-pilose or hairless cypselas.

[4] The species was again collected in 2011, though it was difficult to ascertain the new material was identical, as only a photocopy of the specimen of Hieronymus from the Herbarium of Berlin was available, the original probably destroyed by the fire resulting from the 1943 bombing.

Luckily, isotypes were found in the collections of Asa Gray at Harvard and of the Herbarium of the National University of Córdoba, Argentina, that made sure the new find was indeed identical to the specimen of 1879.

Comparison to the other species of Aphyllocladus showed that the characters of the corollas, anthers, style branches, cypselas, hairs, pollen, and anatomy of the stem of A. decussatus were very different.

However, Famatinanthus shares some other characters with the Gochnatieae and Hyalidae, in particular pointy anther tips, and with Hyaloseris (Stifftioideae) opposite leaves and few-flowered flower heads.

The same in true for the species epithet decussatus, which is Latin, and means "crossed", and has been used in many different taxa to indicate that the leaves are arranged along the stem in opposite pairs, at right angles to those above or below them.

Famatinanthus decussatus is endemic to the Sierra del Famatina, a side chain of the Andes in the La Rioja Province in northwest Argentina.

[1] The plant occurs at altitudes between 1800 and 2700 m. It grows between sparse vegetation, with cacti, and other open shrubs such as Larrea divaricata, Flourensia hirta and Gochnatia glutinosa.

[3] Sacansa is an endemic species only known from about ten distinct locations, within a very limited geographical distribution, estimated below 2,000 km2, in the Sierra de Famatina only, where only small areas are officially protected.