Grey-leaf fountain-pincushion

Description

Leucospermum grandiflorum is an evergreen, upright shrub of up to 2½ m (7½ ft) high that is assigned to the family Proteaceae. It has elliptic, greyish green, softly hairy leaves and initially egg-shaped heads with yellow flowers, later flatter with flowers turning orange. From the center of each flower emerges a long pale yellow style with a pink thickened tip (both later turning carmine) that is bent slightly clockwise, giving the entire head the appearance of a pincushion. Its flowers can be found between July and December. It is called grey-leaf fountain-pincushion or rainbow pincushion in English. L. grandiflorum is an endemic species that can only be found in nature in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Leucospermum grandiflorum is an evergreen, upright shrub of up to 2½ m (7½ ft) high, that has a single robust main stem. Its flowering stems curve up or emerge upright from their base and carry some short cringy hairs and some straight, silky hairs of about ½ cm (0.2 in) long. The softly hairy leaves broadly ellipse-shaped to elliptic-oblong, 5–8 cm (2.0–3.2 in) long and 2–3 cm (0.8–1.2 in) wide, mostly with three bony-tipped teeth near the tip, seldomly without teeth. The hairy looking young flower buds have a spinning top shape. The flowers open in a spiral. The flower heads are initially egg-shaped, later more flattened, 10–12 cm (4.0–4.8 in) across, almost seated or with a stalk of at most 1½ cm (0.6 in) long. The common base of the flowers in the same head are narrowly cone-shaped with a pointy tip, about 4 cm (1.6 in) long and 1 cm (0.4 in) across its base. The bracts subtending the flower head are pointy oval in shape, 1–1½ cm (0.4–0.6 in) long and 5–8 mm (0.20–0.32 in) wide, cartilaginous near its base and papery towards the tip, with a regular row of short equal length hairs along its edges and a tuft of longer, stiff and straight hairs at the tip. The bracts subtending the individual flowers are about 2 cm (0.8 in) long and ½ cm (0.2 in) wide, pointy lance-shaped with a slightly recurved tip, very thickly woolly at the base and covered with fine silky hair further up. The 4-merous perianth is 4½–5 cm long and pale greenish yellow in colour. The lower part, where the lobes remain merged when the flower has opened (called tube), is about 7 mm (0.28 in) long, hairless, narrow at its base and somewhat bulging near its higher end, but slightly compressed sideways and about 4 mm (0.16 in) long.