Protea cynaroides, how closely can one look?

Seen at close range the central cone of cohering Protea cynaroides florets still to open do not look very flower-like. Imagine what this may look like enlarged a few times under a suitable magnifying glass or even under a microscope.

Views of the exceedingly small and the exceedingly large transform appearances of all in the world beyond recognition to the human eye. The eyes, but more the brain, are familiar with scale dimensions of the everyday. We forget that the scale of the social environment of humans to which our visual acuity and data processing faculties are adapted, represents but one glimpse of reality, the one we often take to be the only one.

In science studies of the smaller and the bigger, e.g. in biology and astronomy, exploration reaches out increasingly further away from our scale comfort zone. In this way the world under our noses or light years away can reveal mountains of new knowledge, either nano or never to be reached. Reaching is beyond the rewards of viewing, enhanced by technologies and maintained by curiosity.

The botanists leave the gardeners and plant lovers behind when they home in on finer details of what pictures like this are really conveying. We can all see styles bulging outwards from their gradual elongation to escape the grasp of the four hairy perianth segments in each individual floret.

As the slit between two of the segments increases, pushed open gradually by the increasing force in the curve of the lengthening style, the difference in length of the two components makes it untenable for them to continue fitting together. While pressure builds, the pollen inside the tips of the segments (that double up as stamens) ripens and the stigma, masquerading as the pollen presenter in her younger days, becomes sticky to allow adherence of pollen grains to the pollen presenter (later the stigma).

When the too long style escapes and springs erect, the perianth is demolished for all practical purposes. Spent perianth sections, no longer supported by something sturdy, sink to rest below, while the style remains stiffly erect. Its reason? It has a mission of awaiting pollinators to upload the tiny grains of male input needed in ovaries somewhere else.