Proteas

Ok, I have to say something about proteas which I saw in the wild for the first time during my trip to Nature's Valley.
Note that this is not meant to be a throughout representation of proteas, these are just the one I saw and decided to photograph during my short trip to Nature's Valley.

First of all I have to say that what is called "proteas" now is a much larger group that what it used to be.
As it turns out the International Protea Association (whomever they might be with their seriously disappointing website) has ruled that the term does not only apply to members of the Protea genus but to any members of the Proteaceae Family. This is a very large family of 73 genera of which one is Protea.
The members of the genus Protea are now often referred to as "sugarbush proteas" to differentiate them from the rest.
Weirdly enough under this new all-encompassing rule bottle-brushes, banksias and macadamias are also proteas. Weird!

Anyway, let's use the new convention and talk about the Family, and not the genus.
The Proteaceae Family has 42 genera and 800+ species in Australia; 14 genera and 300+ species in Africa, 330 of those species are in the Southwestern Cape of South Africa. Other genera are present in South America, Eastern Asia, Malaysia, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Polynesia and Malagasy.
The genus Protea itself has 130 species of which about 100 occur in South Africa.

So first of all the sugarbush proteas, the "original" proteas:

Then, in no particular order, the Leucospermum genus, also known as "pincushions". These smell nice, very sweet. None of the other proteas I have photographed were scented, or at least I couldn't smell anything :

Then the last genus of proteas I saw; the Leucodendrons:

At the risk of getting REALLY boring I want to add something about taxonomy.
The Proteaceae Family is broken into 2 subfamilies:
-The Proteideae which occurs mainly in Southern Africa but also in Australia and New Zealand
-The Grevilleoideae which is present in Australia, South America and Southwestern Pacific Islands and has one single specie (cannot find which) in Africa.
Thinking: plate tectonic, splitting of continents, relative timing etc I cannot help but find this very interesting.