''Leucospermum muirii'' is a rounded, upright, evergreen shrub of about high, with a single trunk at its base, that is assigned to the

Proteaceae The Proteaceae form a family of flowering plants predominantly distributed in the Southern Hemisphere. The family comprises 83 genera with about 1,660 known species. Together with the Platanaceae and Nelumbonaceae, they make up the order Pro ...

. The flowering branches are thick and are initially grey due to a covering of fine crinkly hairs, which are soon lost. The very narrow spade-shaped leaves of about long and wide carry three to seven teeth, and also quickly lose their soft layer of hairs. Its smallish globe-shaped flower heads of in diameter occur with one to four together, each on a

stalk Stalk or stalking may refer to: Behaviour * Stalk, the stealthy approach (phase) of a predator towards its prey * Stalking, an act of intrusive behaviour or unwanted attention towards a person * Deer stalking, the pursuit of deer for sport Biol ...

of long. It has pale to greenish yellow flowers, becoming orange with age, with some long hairs near their tips, from which straight styles stick out. This gives the flower head the likeness of a pincushion. It flowers from July till October and is pollinated by birds. It is called Albertinia pincushion in English and bloukoolhout in Afrikaans. It is an endemic species that can only be found near

Albertinia ''Albertinia'' is a genus of flowering plants in the daisy family described as a genus in 1820.Western Cape province of South Africa.

Description

''Leucospermum muirii'' is an evergreen, rounded, upright shrub of about high, branching from a central trunk. The flowering branches are slim, thick, which are initially covered with soft grey crinkly hairs, which are lost over time. The leaves an almost linear to very narrowly spade-shaped, long and wide with three to seven teeth near its tip, the surface at first with soft crisped hairs which are soon lost however. The flower heads are set individually or in groups of two to four together, globe-shaped in diameter, each set on an inflorescence stalk of long. The common base of the flowers in the same head is broad conical in shape, approximately long and wide, which is subtended by oval bracts with a pointy tip, long and about wide, tightly overlapping, rubbery in consistency, greyish softly hairy. The bracts that subtend the individual flower are broadly oval with a pointy tip, about long and wide, rubbery in consistency, with dense woolly hairs at their base and rubbery in consistency. The 4-merous perianth is long, pale to greenish yellow in colour. The lowest, fully merged, part of the perianth, called tube, is about ½ cm (0.2 in) long, cylindric in shape or slightly laterally compressed, hairless at base and minutely powdery where it merges into the middle part (or claws) where the perianth is split lengthwise, which is also powdery or have very short hairs. The upper part (or limbs), which enclosed the pollen presenter in the bud consists of four narrowly lanceolate lobes of about long, with the outer surface of the limbs facing sideways and to the center of the flower head have a tuft of long hairs, the lobe facing the rim of the flower head hardly so. From the perianth emerges a straight style, long, topped by a very slight thickening called pollen presenter. That is cylinder-shaped, about long, with the very end split in two. The

ovary The ovary is an organ in the female reproductive system that produces an ovum. When released, this travels down the fallopian tube into the uterus, where it may become fertilized by a sperm. There is an ovary () found on each side of the body. ...

is subtended by four pale yellow, awl-shaped nectar producing scales of about long. The subtribe Proteinae, to which the genus ''Leucospermum'' has been assigned, consistently has a basic chromosome number of twelve ( 2n=24).

Differences with related species

''L. muirii'' looks like '' L. truncatum'', which has more soft hair on its broader leaves.

Taxonomy

As far as we know, the Albertinia pincushion was first collected for science by the South African naturalist John Muir in 1909, from a location called Zandhoogte near Albertinia. In 1910, Edwin Percy Phillips described it and named it in honor of its collector ''Leucospermum muirii''. It has been assigned to the section '' Tumiditubus''.

Distribution, habitat and ecology

''Leucospermum muirii'' is an endemic species restricted to the Albertinia plateau a few miles east and west of

Albertinia ''Albertinia'' is a genus of flowering plants in the daisy family described as a genus in 1820.Still Bay The Stillbay (also Still bay) industry is the name given by archaeologists A. J. H. Goodwin and C. van Riet Lowe in 1929 to a Middle Stone Age stone tool manufacturing style after the site of Stilbaai (also called Still Bay) in South Africa where i ...

and Gouritsmond at altitudes varying between . The Albertinia pincushion only grows in flats consisting of deep, white sands, where it may form small dense stands, in the company of several Ericaceae, tall Restionaceae, ''

Leucadendron galpinii ''Leucadendron'' is a genus of about 80 species of flowering plants in the family Proteaceae, endemic (ecology), endemic to South Africa, where they are a prominent part of the fynbos ecoregion and vegetation type. Description Species in the ge ...

'', ''

Leucospermum praecox ''Leucospermum praecox'' is an evergreen, rounded, upright shrub of up to 3 m (9 ft) high, and 4 m (12 ft) in diameter that is assigned to the family Proteaceae. It has hairless, inverted egg-shaped to broadly wedge-shaped lea ...

'' and '' Protea repens''. It is pollinated by birds. The seeds need about two months to ripen and subsequently fall to the ground, to be collected by ants and carried into their underground nests. The plants die when exposed to one of the wildfires that naturally occurs in the

fynbos Fynbos (; meaning fine plants) is a small belt of natural shrubland or heathland vegetation located in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. This area is predominantly coastal and mountainous, with a Mediterranean clim ...

where this plant grows, but the stored seeds will subsequently germinate to continuate the population.

Conservation

The Albertinia pincushion is considered endangered as it has a very limited

distribution Distribution may refer to: Mathematics *Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations * Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a vari ...

of below and is under thread by agricultural development, so-called field

improvement Improvement is the process of a thing moving from one state to a state considered to be better, usually through some action intended to bring about that better state. The concept of improvement is important to governments and businesses, as well a ...

s to increase the yield of tall restionids for

thatching Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge (''Cladium mariscus''), rushes, heather, or palm branches, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. Since the bulk of ...

invasive species An invasive species otherwise known as an alien is an introduced organism that becomes overpopulated and harms its new environment. Although most introduced species are neutral or beneficial with respect to other species, invasive species ad ...

urban expansion Urban sprawl (also known as suburban sprawl or urban encroachment) is defined as "the spreading of urban developments (such as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city." Urban sprawl has been described as the unrestricted growt ...

near Albertinia and climate change. The species can often only be found on roadsides, suggesting it has already disappeared from the surrounding fields.

References

External links

several photos
{{Taxonbar, from=Q5974031 muirii Endemic flora of the Cape Provinces Plants described in 1910