Protea scabra

Protea scabra, commonly the sandpaper-leaf sugarbush, is a rhizomatous, tufted shrublet that spreads on the ground in a mat-form to 50 cm in diameter. The multistemmed plant resprouts after fire. There are black scales on the underground stems that enhance the sandpapery, rough to the touch texture, warranting the specific name of scabra; and the sandpaper-leaf reference. Scaber is a Latin word meaning rough, scurfy or fretted. Above-ground the stems grow up to 20 cm in height.

The top-shaped flowers grow on the ground in the centre of their tufts of long narrow leaves towering over them. The flowerhead is enveloped by five or six rows of involucral bracts that are darker closer to their tips and covered in reddish hairs. The narrow perianths or individual flowers covering the stamens and styles are densely stacked in a short, broad cone, creamy white with brown tips.

Pollination is thought to be done by mammals, particularly by nocturnal rodents. Flowering is best after fire, occurring from before midautumn to after midspring.

The species distribution is small in the far southwest of the Western Cape, from Sir Lowry’s Pass eastwards along lower mountain slopes including the Caledon Swartberg to around Riviersonderend.

The habitat is fynbos and renosterveld slopes in sandstone, shale and clay. The habitat population is deemed vulnerable early in the twenty first century, due to habitat loss from development and alien vegetation invasion including hakea and pine forest or escapes.

This is not a garden favourite in the wider market, although ardent collectors can grow the plant from seed and get pleasure from displaying their achievement in a well drained sunny rockery.

It is not clear whether the gardener desiring the plant to bloom should make a small motivational fire upon the plant, as supervisors of lazy workers are sometimes wont to do; in that case of course not over but under them and only when the union is asleep (Bean and Johns, 2005; Rebelo, 1995; Rourke, 1980; Eliovson, 1973; Andrew, 2017; iNaturalist; http://protea.worldonline.co.za; http://redlist.sanbi.org).