Leucospermum hamatum
Leucospermum hamatum is a mat-forming, evergreen shrublet of only about high, from the Proteaceae. It is usually in diameter, has long trailing stems and upright, inverted lance-shaped, entire leaves but for one to five shallow reddish bony teeth near the tip. Its small flower heads of 1½–2 cm in diameter, consist of four to seven drab carmine-colored flowers that strongly curve back to the centre of the head. It mainly flowers from July till November and is pollinated by mice. It has been given the common name Ruitersbos pincushion.
Description
Leucospermum hamatum is a crawling low shrub of no more than high that can form dense mats of in diameter, with stout branches of up to 2½ cm thick that stretch out along ground and originate from a central stout trunk of up to 4½ cm thick. The flowering branches are slim, trailing along the ground, frequently divided in two, about thick, with very few soft long hairs, mostly with one flower head at the tip of the branches and several in the axils of the furthest leaves. The leaves are alternately set, upright, narrowly oblong to oblong-elliptic, 4½–6½ cm long and wide, set on a leaf stalk of up to ½ cm long. Near the leaf tip are usually about three teeth, sometime the margin is wholly entire. The surface of the leaf is initially slightly powdery, but this is lost later on.The flower head is 1½–2 cm in diameter and consists of four to seven flowers in one whorl set on a stalk of 1–2 cm long. Three or four lance-shaped involucral bracts of long with a pointy or pointed tip subtend the flower head or are entirely absent. The bracteole that is subtending the individual flower is 1–1½ cm long and wide, oval in circumference with a pointy tip, sharply folded at the midvein and embracing the foot of the perianth, with a slightly powdery surface and a row of fine hairs around the rim. The perianth is very strongly curved toward the center of the flower head, in long. In the lower part of the perianth, the four lobes are fused into a tube which is much inflated towards its end, up to ½ cm in diameter, without hairs. The middle part that consists of the claws is wide near the base, narrow near the tip and strongly coiled at anthesis. The three perianth lobes facing toward the center of the flower head and sideways are incompletely fused and about long, the free lobe facing the rim of the flower head is long. The outer surface is hairless, but where the tube splits in four, the margins have a row of woolly hairs. The four anthers are directly attached to the 2 mm long upper part of the perianth by a swollen fleshy connection. The style that is 1¾–2 cm long is very strongly bent towards the center of the flower head, and nearer to its tip both tapers and is set with stiff hairs facing towards the base, changing to coarsely powdery further toward the base. It is topped by a slight thickening called pollen presenter, which has a cone-shape with a pointy tip, is about 2 mm long, with a groove at the very end that acts as the stigma. The ovary of about 1 mm long, gradually merges into the style, has a fine powdery surface. It is subtended by four nectar producing blunt line-shaped scales of about 2 mm long. The fruit is a cylindric, greyish-white achene, with a fine powdery surface and a central indent at its base.
The subtribe Proteinae, to which the genus Leucospermum has been assigned, consistently has a basic chromosome number of twelve.