Leucospermum patersonii at Salmonsdam

Leucospermum patersonii bush growth takes up space for showing many flowering branches to the sun. It is, however, the hungry insect and bird customers who come by that are important to the plants at flowering time.

Capacity to dominate and to advertise pays many living species on earth. Pushing and shoving are the order of the day. Invading the space of neighbouring plants, usurping Lebensraum, is a big part of fynbos lifestyle. It often goes unnoticed. There's so much wind here! Some species have to bide their time, waiting for fire even to get temporary lodgings.

When the going is good, the floral advertising starts. Flowering plants are understandably committed adherents to the tenets of floral advertising. Their strategies involve colour, shape, height, position, size, fragrance, season and most important, the edible rewards for targeted pollinator species, maximising their visitation effects.

So, harvest time festivities are not only a human habit. Plants provide festive colours in season, their pollinators adding joyous sounds lifting events.

It’s not the animal and bird sounds that put off the plants though. It’s the unrefined eating habits of some visitors that devour leaves, flowers and whole plants, as well as the in flagrante interspecies consumption of some smaller pollinators that rob plants of service providers.

These everyday micro-travesties and tragedies involving the fallen, yes, the eaten, would have made the outraged insect media, if there had been any (Privett, 2022; Privett and Lutzeyer, 2010; Coates Palgrave, 2002; iNaturalist).