Leucadendron

The Leucadendron genus comprises 83 species of shrubs or small evergreen trees. The bushes may be erect or creeping. A few resprout after fire from multi-stemmed woody bases, the others reseed, growing single stems that branch aboveground.

The generic name, Leucadendron, is derived from the Greek words leucos meaning white or hoary and dendron meaning tree, referring to the silver tree, the iconic Cape representative of the genus. It used to be called witteboom (white tree) in the early days of the Cape Colony when the language there was deviant Dutch.

Leucadendron leaves are alternate, simple, stalkless or short-stalked, the margins entire. The leaf-shape is variable, including ovate, elliptic, obovate and needle-like.

The genus is dioecious, the female plants bearing many seeds in cone-shaped infructescences or aggregate fruit, the male plants bearing pollen cones or inflorescences. Leucadendron flowerheads are solitary, dense spikes at stem-tips, often scented.

The male head is mostly globose or cylindrical, a small papery involucre of brown bracts at the base subtends the cylindrical, short-tubed perianths. The anthers, the key parts of the male flowerhead, are sessile to nearly so. A style is present, thread-like, sometimes curved, sometimes hairy, ending in the pollen presenter, a vital feature of Proteaceae flowering.

The female cone comprises overlapping bracts, one below each floret, becoming woody after the florets have opened. The perianth is transversely compressed, squashed by the bract. The style is thread-like and hairless, ending in a swollen stigmatic disc. The ovary contains one ovule.

There are staminodes present in the female florets, as there are styles present on the male florets. The styles are more useful for presenting pollen to insects and other pollinators than the staminodes that are merely old habits from days of bisexual ancestor species.

The seed is an ovoid or biconvex achene or a samara. The seeds of a few species are rodent dispersed, cached by rats, while a few have fleshy elaiosome attachments, dispersed and eaten by ants that do no harm to the seed itself.

All the Leucadendron species grow in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape fynbos, few in KwaZulu-Natal.

The female cone in picture was photographed in Kirstenbosch. When flowering is done, only the tightly imbricate bracts are visible on the hard cone (Leistner, (Ed.), 2000; Andrew, 2017; Wikipedia).