Waterlily sugarbush

Description

Protea subvestita, the waterlily sugarbush, is a flower bearing shrub that belongs to the well-known genus Protea. The plant is endemic to South Africa and occurs in Mpumalanga on the escarpment of the Wakkerstroom, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Eastern Cape (as far as Somerset East) and the Klein Swartberg. The shrub is large, erect and grows up to 5 & nbsp; m and flowers mainly from January to March. The plant dies after a fire but the seeds survive. The seeds are stored in a shell and released after they are ripe and are dispersed by the wind. The plant is unisexual. Pollination takes place through the action of birds. The plant grows on mountainous acid veld and fynbos at altitudes of 1 200 - 2 300 & nbsp; m. In Afrikaans it is known as the lippeblomsuikerbos. The plant's national number is 98. Protea is a genus of South African flowering plants, also called sugarbushes (Afrikaans: suikerbos). Most proteas occur south of the Limpopo River. However, Protea caffra kilimandscharica is found in the chaparral zone of Mount Kenya National Park. About 92% of the species occurs only in the Cape Floristic Region, a narrow belt of mountainous coastal land from Clanwilliam to Grahamstown, South Africa. The extraordinary richness and diversity of species characteristic of the Cape flora are thought to be caused in part by the diverse landscape, where populations can become isolated from each other and in time develop into separate species. The genus Protea was named in 1735 by Carl Linnaeus, possibly after the Greek god Proteus, who could change his form at will, possibly because they have such a wide variety of forms. Linnaeus's genus was formed by merging a number of genera previously published by Herman Boerhaave, although precisely which of Boerhaave's genera were included in Linnaeus's Protea varied with each of Linnaeus's publications. The family Proteaceae to which Protea species belong is an ancient one among angiosperms. Evidence from pollen fossils suggests Proteaceae ancestors grew in Gondwana, in the Upper Cretaceous, 75–80 million years ago. The Proteaceae are divided into two subfamilies: the Proteoideae, best represented in southern Africa, and the Grevilleoideae, concentrated in Australia and South America and the other smaller segments of Gondwana that are now part of eastern Asia.