Protea parvula

Protea parvula, commonly the dainty sugarbush, is a low-growing shrub of below 20 cm in height. It produces trailing stems that often wither in winter cold. The specific epithet, parvula, is derived from the Latin word parvus meaning small. P. parvula is one of the smallest summer rainfall proteas in South Africa. The multistemmed plants often live long, resprouting from a thick underground rootstock or lignotuber and mostly surviving the fires typical of their grassland habitat.

The long narrow leaves are nearly stalkless and variably shaped: oblong, linear, elliptic, lanceolate or oblanceolate, occasionally somewhat sickle-shaped. The leaves become up to 2 cm wide and 14 cm long. The hairless blades are slightly blue-green, the margins often faintly red. The leaves may be dense at stem-tips.

The species distribution is in Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Eswatini along the Drakensberg escarpment and plateau.

The habitat is short grassland in acid soils, rocky terrain at high altitude, receiving summer rainfall and winter snow. The habitat population is considered near threatened early in the twenty first century, due to forest plantations, mining and invading plant species (Pooley, 1998; Rourke, 1980; iNaturalist; http://protea.worldonline.co.za; http://redlist.sanbi.org).