''Protea vogtsiae'', also known as the Kouga sugarbush, is a small flowering

shrub A shrub (often also called a bush) is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees ...

of the genus '' Protea'' within the

family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...

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 ...

, which is only found growing in the wild in the southern Cape Region of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

. It was named after Marie Vogts. In the

Afrikaans language Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch dialects, Dutch vernacular of Holland, Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German set ...

it has been given the vernacular name of ''Marie-se-roossuikerbos''.

Taxonomy

''Protea vogtsiae'' was first collected flowering in August 1972 at 1,067 metres elevation on the lower southern slopes of the Saptoukop mountain in the Kouga range near the town of Willowmore by the South African botanist

John Patrick Rourke John Patrick Rourke FMLS (born 26 March 1942, in Cape Town) is a South African botanist, who worked at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden and became curator of the Compton Herbarium. He is a specialist in the flora of the Cape Floristi ...

. Rourke subsequently described it as a species new to science in an article in the Journal of South African Botany published in 1974. An isotype of Rourke's original collection (#1396) is housed in the

herbarium A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study. The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sheet of paper (called ...

at the Kew Botanical Gardens.

Classification

''P. vogtsiae'' was classified in section ''Crinitae'' by Tony Rebelo in 1995, what he calls the "eastern ground sugarbushes", along with ''P. foliosa'', ''P. intonsa'' and ''P. montana''.

Description

This species grows in the form of a low, dwarf shrublet only in height. It has subterranean stems (

rhizome In botany and dendrology, a rhizome (; , ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow hori ...

s), these have a characteristically scaled bark. The stems form loose tufts of leaves across. It has

glaucous ''Glaucous'' (, ) is used to describe the pale grey or bluish-green appearance of the surfaces of some plants, as well as in the names of birds, such as the glaucous gull (''Larus hyperboreus''), glaucous-winged gull (''Larus glaucescens''), g ...

blue leaves forming a rosette, which blooms at ground level. The leaves are in length and 8–30 mm in width. The

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ...

s are specialised structures called pseudanthia, also known simply as flower heads, containing hundred of reduced flowers, called

floret This glossary of botanical terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts relevant to botany and plants in general. Terms of plant morphology are included here as well as at the more specific Glossary of plant morphology and Glossary o ...

s. The

involucral bract In botany, a bract is a modified or specialized leaf, especially one associated with a reproductive structure such as a flower, inflorescence axis or cone scale. Bracts are usually different from foliage leaves. They may be smaller, larger, or of ...

s are coloured dull

carmine Carmine ()also called cochineal (when it is extracted from the cochineal insect), cochineal extract, crimson lake, or carmine lake is a pigment of a bright-red color obtained from the aluminium complex derived from carminic acid. Specific code n ...

, flushed with green. It is

monoecious Monoecy (; adj. monoecious ) is a sexual system in seed plants where separate male and female cones or flowers are present on the same plant. It is a monomorphic sexual system alongside gynomonoecy, andromonoecy and trimonoecy. Monoecy is conne ...

, with both sexes occurring in each floret.

Similar species

''Protea vogtsiae'' is similar to ''P. intonsa'' in section ''Crinitae'', both being dwarf shrubs with subterranean stems, but has broader leaves more similar to those of ''P. foliosa'', which is a much larger shrub with numerous erect-growing branches and with much broader, rounder and shorter leaves.

Distribution

It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to South Africa, where it is found in the mountain ranges straddling the southern border of Western and

Eastern Cape The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are East London and Gqeberha. The second largest province in the country (at 168,966 km2) after Northern Cape, it was formed in ...

provinces: the Outeniqua and Kouga mountains as well as the

Baviaanskloof Baviaanskloof Mega Reserve is a protected area in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Characteristics The Baviaanskloof - (Dutch for "Valley of Baboons") - lies between the Baviaanskloof Range, Baviaanskloof and Kouga Range, Kouga mountain ...

. It occurs on the Saptoukop and Hoopsberg in the Kouga Mountains. Different populations are small and isolated from each other, but nonetheless where it locally occurs it is common.

Ecology

The plant grows exclusively in a

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 ...

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

in the wild, where it is found on steep, rocky, south-facing slopes. It grows in substrates derived from

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

. It is found at altitudes of 1,000 to 1,500 metres. It grows wedged between Table Mountain Sandstone boulders. The mature plants are killed by the

wildfire A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire ...

s which periodically pass through its habitat, but the seeds can survive such an event. It blooms in spring, from August to November. The flowers are pollinated by rodents. In 1977 the botanists Delbert Wiens and

first proposed this pollination method in certain ''Protea'' species. After they mature, the seeds stored in the old, dry infructescences which are persistently retained on the branches of the plant. When, after two years or so, the seeds are finally released, they are dispersed by means of the wind.

Conservation

The conservation status of ''Protea vogtsiae'' was first assessed in 1980 as 'indeterminate'. In 1991 the distribution was believed to be restricted to a relatively small area, and Jan Vlok from Cape Nature Conservation stated that most of its habitat had been destroyed by agriculture. He refrained from assigning it a conservation status, however, as he suspected there might be more extant populations than the several he knew of. In 1996 the South African National Botanical Institute, later the

South African National Biodiversity Institute The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) is an organisation established in 2004 in terms of the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act, No 10 of 2004, under the South African Department of Environmental Affairs ( ...

(SANBI), assessed the conservation status of the species as 'not threatened' for the Red list of southern African plants, nonetheless it was considered rare in 1998. In 2009 SANBI re-assessed the species as '

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

', a position they reiterated in the 2019 assessment. The total population numbers are believed to be stable as of 2019.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q18083890 vogtsiae Flora of the Cape Provinces Taxa named by John Patrick Rourke