🪷Pincushion Protea🪷
About The Flower
The Pincushion Protea has long-lasting flower heads in yellows, oranges and reds consist of a large number of small flowers with stiff protruding styles – fascinating and almost unnatural to the touch.
Hybrids and cultivars of our indigenous Pincushion Proteas are grown the world over for the cut-flower trade, and are probably one of the most distinctive and recognised flowers on the planet.
In South Africa, where they hail from, you will find pincushions in flower from July to November.
Origin
This small South African tree originally grew on rocky slopes on the coast in the south-west of the Cape of Good Hope. The pincushion protea is now also grown in Israel and Australia.
Fun Facts
- Proteas date back 300 million years, making them one of the oldest flowers on the planet.
- In the 1800s, nectar from the Protea was used medicinally as a cough syrup.
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All proteas have a proteoid root system One thing that ties all of the differently shaped and sized proteas together is their root system.
The proteoid root system allows them to survive in soil that isn’t rich in nutrients. - Proteas can survive wildfires Dormant buds survive the wildfires that so often clear the dry Cape land, only to emerge once the fire has gone out. The plants are, as such, hardy and can withstand the toughest of weather conditions.
- Proteas naturally occur in the Southern Hemisphere Because of this, it is believed that the protea genus originated on the super-continent Gondwana. When the continent eventually split, proteas were spread across different continents and countries including Australia, New Zealand and South America.
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