Leucospermum praecox
Leucospermum praecox is an evergreen, rounded, upright shrub of up to 3 m high, and 4 m in diameter that is assigned to the family Proteaceae. It has hairless, inverted egg-shaped to broadly wedge-shaped leaves of about 5 cm long with six to eleven teeth near the tip, globe-shaped flower head with initially yellow flowers, later orange or scarlet, with styles sticking far out, giving the head the appearance of a pincushion. It is called Mossel Bay pincushion or large-tufted pincushion in English. It flowers between April and September. It is an endemic species that is restricted to the very south of the Western Cape province of South Africa.
Description
The Mossel Bay pincushion is an upright, rounded shrub of 2–3 m high and up to 4 m in diameter that has a stout main stem of up to 8 cm in diameter. The branches are covered by a smooth, grey bark. The flowering branches are round in cross-section, ½–1 cm in diameter and covered in a dense, greyish layer of felty, cringy hairs pressed to the surface, with some long silky hairs. The leaves are hairless, inverted egg-shaped or broadly wedge-shaped, 3½–7 cm long and 1½–3 cm wide, with between six and eleven teeth near the tip, oriented slightly pointing upwards and somewhat overlapping.The flower heads are seated in the axil of a leaf, globe-shaped, 6 cm in diameter, with up to four head per flowering stem. The common base of the flowers in the same head is broadly cone-shaped, about 2 cm high and 1½ cm wide. It is subtended by an involucre consisting of oval bracts with a pointy tip of about 0.8 cm long and ½ cm wide, that are rubbery in consistency, and densely set with soft grey hairs. The bracts that subtend the individual flowers are inverted egg-shaped with a suddenly pointed tip, about 1 cm long and ½ cm wide, thickly woolly at its base and rubbery in consistency.
The perianth is about 3 cm long, yellow in color when opening, but becoming orange when aging. The lower part with the lobes fused is 6–8 mm long, hairless and narrow at its base, but very finely powdery and ballooning higher up, to be suddenly narrowed again where the middle part of the perianth begins. The middle part where at least one of the lobes becomes free when the flower opens, is pale yellow in color, curves back near its upper end and is powdery hairy. The higher part of the lobes is narrowly lance-shaped, ½ cm long, are covered by long soft silky hairs on the outside, carrying the almost seated anther. The style is initially pale yellow, but becomes orange when older, 3.8–4.8 cm long and bending towards the centre of the head. The slightly thickened tip called pollen presenter is narrowly cone-shaped with a pointy tip and about 3 mm long. Subtending the ovary are four opaque, rubbery, awl-shaped scales of about 3 mm long.
Differences with related species
L. praecox differs from its nearest relatives by the broadly cone-shaped base of the flower head, the inverted egg-shaped to broadly wedge-shaped leaves with six to eleven teeth near the tip, the finely powdery perianth, with its basal tube inflated, the 3.8–4.8 cm long style tipped by a narrowly cone-shaped pollen presenter with a pointy tip.Taxonomy
As far as we know, Alexander Prior was the first to collect a specimen of this species in 1847, and it is remarkable that it was not found during the 18th and early 19th century since this is a large and conspicuously flowering shrub, which is a relatively common species on the Albertinia limestone plateau. John Patrick Rourke described it in 1970 as Leucospermum praecox.The species name praecox is a Latin word meaning "early flowering".
L. praecox is the type species of the section Tumiditubus.