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Outeniekwa-kreupelhout (Leucospermum glabrum)

Description

Leucospermum glabrum is an evergreen, erect, woody shrub with a neat, rounded shape, 1-2 m tall. It is quite a vigorous grower and remains vigorous for many years under correct growing conditions. It grows from a single stem to produce a thick trunk, with smooth wrinkled bark, with age. This pincushion has lush foliage and new leaves appearing with a soft red blush. Leaves have 7-14 glandular teeth. The inflorescence is made up of many flowers forming the flower head which is 70-90 mm in diameter. Bright orange flower heads appear from August to October. Ovoid nut seeds are released 1-2 months after flowering. The Outeniqua pincushion grows in a Mediterranean climate and prefers cool, southern slopes. It grows well in peat to well-drained, sandy soils, and occurs in isolated stands, at altitudes of 150-500 m. Natural distribution is the Outeniqua and Tsitsikama Mountains. Flowers are pollinated by birds and once seeds are released, ants disperse the seeds by taking the nuts into their nests, where they are stored. Fynbos is a fire-dependant ecosystem and Leucospermum glabrum has adapted to this. During a fire, the seeds are safe in the ant nests and survive the blaze to re-grow and replace the mother plants which are killed in the fire. Leucospermum is a genus of upright, sometimes creeping shrubs that is assigned to the Proteaceae, with currently forty-eight known species. Almost all species are easily recognised as Leucospermum because of the long protruding styles with a thickened pollen-presenter, which jointly give the flower head the appearance of a pincushion, its common name. The shrubs mostly have a single stem at their base, but some species sprout from an underground rootstock, from which the plant can regrow after fire has killed the above ground biomass. A larger group of species have seeds that are collected by ants, which take them to their underground nests to feed on their ant breads, a seed dispersal strategy known as myrmecochory. This ensures that the seeds do not burn, so new plants can grow from them. It has mostly seated, simple, mostly leathery, often softly hairy leaves, set in a spiral, with entire margins or more often, with 3–17 blunt teeth with thickened, bony tips, and without stipules at their foot. The flowers are organised with many together in heads with bracts on the under- or outside. The hermaphrodite flowers themselves are set on a common base that may be cylindrical, conic or flat, and have small bracts at their base. The flowers have a perianth that is hairy on the outside, particularly at the tip, and consists of four tepals that are merged into a tube. Usually the four anthers are merged individually with the tip the perianth lobes, and only in a few species, a very short filament is present that further down cannot be distinguished from the tepals anymore. While still in the bud, the pollen is transferred from the anthers to the pollen-presenter, a thickening at the tip of the style. At that stage, the style grows considerably and rips through the sutures between the two perianth lobes facing away from the centre of the flower head. The perianth lobes all four remain attached to each other, or with three, or the four free lobes all curl back on themselves (like a the lit of a sardine can), rimming the top of the tube. The superior ovary consists of one carpel and contains a single ovary, and is subtended by four small scales. The fruit is an oval or almost globe-shaped nut. Pincushions can be found in South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

Taxonomic tree

  • Domain: Eukarya

    • Kingdom: Plantae

      • Phylum:

        • Class: Magnoliopsida

          • Order: Proteales

            • Family: Proteaceae

              • Genus: Leucospermum