Leucospermum grandiflorum bud narrow and young

The early Leucospermum grandiflorum flowerhead bud is turbinate (shaped like a top). It is also hairy in different styles: It grows on a hairy stalk of up to 1,5 cm long. Down below in picture, the involucral bracts growing in several rows are hairy on their margins. The upper (inner) bract rows are increasingly long-haired at their tips, the white, hairy tufts droop angled away from the bud body.

The lowermost small bracts are flexed down, densely covered in hairs and probably already dry. Some bracts above them have started to dry from their tips as well, blackish brown in colour.

The individual florets of which there is a multitude forming the head, cohere in a dense, cone-shaped cluster. They are lemon-yellow on the lower limb parts of the four-segmented perianths, sparsely covered in soft pale hairs. The lance-shaped tips of the perianths, at this stage covering the pollen presenters, are pale greyish white, densely hairy to velvety.

Dark red hair-like protrusions are visible at some of the perianth tips.

Something has gone wrong with a premature style protruding awkwardly from its perianth on the side of the flowerhead. Successful flowering can be a percentage game, even in this robust Proteaceae family (Bond and Goldblatt, 1984; Eliovson, 1983; iNaturalist; Wikipedia; http://pza.sanbi.org).