Mimetes cucullatus
English: Pagoda; Common pagoda; Red pagoda; Common mimetes; Red mimetes.
Afrikaans: Rooistompie; Stompie.
Synonym: Leucadendron cucullatum.
Name: cucullātus is Latin means hooded.
Region: South Africa.
Habitat: can cope with a relatively large range of environmental circumstances.
Use: ornamental; cut-flower.
Botany
Evergreen shrub; resprouter, shoots up new growth from its base after a fire; other Mimetes are re-seeders, their seeds germinate after a fire, but mature plants are killed by fire.
Stem: several, mostly not branching, occasionally forking, upright stems of 1 to 2 m high; covered in grey felty hair when young.
Root: firm woody tuber.
Leaves: alternate; very narrow to broad elliptic or inverted egg-shaped, ± 4 cm long and ± 1 cm wide; scarlet coloured when young, green lower down the stem.
Inflorescence: many flower heads; axils of the highest leaves on the stem; cylindric; 6 to 10 cm long and 4 to 7 cm in diameter, topped by a tuft of smallish, more or less upright, narrowly egg-shaped, scarlet coloured leaves, with 4 to 7 flowers; leaves that subtend the flower heads are inverted fiddle-shaped, folded backwards from the midline out, scarlet in the upper parts during flowering, gradually turning through yellowish to green at the base or entirely yellowish with a green base or softly orange; bracts are unequal in size, clasp the base of the flowers tidly, fringed by a rim of silky hairs, form a two-lipped involucre, below the attachment ellipse-shaped with a pointy tip, larger, above the attachment are smaller, lance-shaped with a pointy tip.
Flowers: 4-merous.
Pollination: by birds.
Ecology: ants may defend the plants against insect herbivores, attracted by extrafloral nectaries at the tips of its leaves.
Dispersion: by ants.