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Mimetes hottentoticus
Also called Matchstick Mimetes
Mimetes hottentoticus is an evergreen, upright shrub of 1.5–3 m (5–10 ft) high from the family Proteaceae. It has silvery, broadly egg-shaped to egg-shaped leaves with three small teeth crowded at the tip. The flower heads and subtending leaves form a cylindric inflorescence, topped with a tuft of smaller, more or less upright silvery or pinkish leaves. Each flowerhead contains 8–12 flowers with conspicuously red styles, that are all parallel, projected straight up, pushing against the leaf subtending the higher flowerhead. The styles end in a short white zone topped by a thick blackish pollen presenter. Flowers can usually be found from January till March, few may persist into May. It is called silver pagoda or matchstick pagoda in English and Hottentotstompie in Afrikaans.
The three known populations of the matchstick pagoda can be found near the Kogelberg Peak, at an elevation between 1000 and 1250 m (3250–4150 ft). There it grows in peaty seeps on acidic sandy soil poor in nutrients derived from quartzite, in a vegetation type called Kogelberg Sandstone Fynbos amongst other species like the Resionid Elegia mucronata, Brunia alopecuroides, and Erica desmantha. These locations are always moist with an average annual precipitation of more than 2,000 mm (79 in), during the winter when most rain is falling with northwesterly wind, and during the summer due to frequent mist from seawinds from the southeast.
Kogelberg Silver Bottlebrush · Silver Pagoda · Conical Pagoda · Golden pagoda · Common Pagoda · Fringed Bottlebrush · Marsh pagoda · Cryptic Pagoda · Threeflower pagoda · Limestone Pagoda · Splendid Pagoda · Mace Pagoda
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Mimetes hottentoticus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
