EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Explanation:   Ah, beautiful proteas!  A horticulturist's delight.  What many mistake for "the" flower, however, is actually a flowerhead, composed of many flowers grouped together along with colorful bracts.  Protea flowers do not have separate sepals and petals, but instead there are only undifferentiated tepals.  

Proteas are called sugarbushes in Africa, and in the southern Cape portion of South Africa the plants are pollinated by locally endemic birds called Sugarbirds.  Other key pollinators are gerbils, mice, rats, and shrews; many beetles; other birds; and, for a few protea species, the wind.  

Native proteas abound in parts of southern Africa.  There are about 360 species of proteas in southern Africa, and an amazing 330 of them are confined to the remarkably diverse but tiny Cape Floral Kingdom, occurring mostly on nutrient-poor soils.  The protea plant group has a most interesting ecology.

Protea seedheads exhibit a spiral pattern well known to follow the Fibonacci series, as we had explored in a previous episode of EPOW.