Mimetes hottentoticus flowers open and closed

The stem-tip inflorescence of Mimetes hottentoticus at best looks like a busy affair, more so when some flowers are open and others not yet as in the photo. Below each silvery pink discoloured floral leaf a small batch of flowers is doing the utmost to be noticed at the opportune time by hungry pollinators.

The wiry red styles are bent in the still unopened flowers, the pollen presenter covered in the hairy tip of the cohering segments of the perianth. The moment this hairy covering splits, pollen is deposited upon the stigma, the style tip that is for the time being pollen presenter when the style straightens.

There are batches of bent styles and straight ones in the photo. At the tips of the straight ones the pale brown pollen presenters await visitors to smear them with pollen while they seek nectar.

Later, when this task is fulfilled, they will revert to their feminine function of receiving pollen for fertilising their own eggs in the waiting ovules. This happens when the pollen grain grows a pollen tube that penetrates the pistil tissue in search of the microscopic opening in an ovule (Capon, 2005; http://pza.sanbi.org).