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 more under a microscope.

Views of the exceedingly small and exceedingly large transform appearances of all in the world beyond recognition to the human eye; familiar to eyes adapted to those scale dimensions. 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 to be discovered as our viewing technologies improve and our curiosity lasts.

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 for now, becomes sticky to allow adherence of the pollen to the pollen presenter (stigma) at the time of their parting.

When the too long style springs erect, it demolishes the perianth. The spent perianth sections sink to rest below while the style remains stiffly erect, awaiting the pollinators to upload the tiny grains of male input needed in ovaries somewhere else.