Mimetes cucullatus hairy start

This is what emerging Mimetes cucullatus floral bud tips look like shortly after they have parted the involucral bracts around their small beginnings. The bunch of white and woolly mopheads like albino Beatles will perform in colour and shape, rather than in sound and word.

The four to eight perianths will elongate to their normal length first. Then the reddish styles inside them will break free, for their normal length is longer. While the pollen presenters at the style tips hold pollen grain enticements up for touching itinerant sunbirds and Cape sugarbirds seeking nectar, the bearded tufts of discarded perianth segments hang below in decorative whitish drapes.

Thus Proteus, the many-formed, shape-shifting dead god of antiquity is remembered in yet another intriguing form of the Proteaceae family named after him (Manning, 2009; Rebelo, 1995; iNaturalist).