Leucospermum praecox, another natural beauty
Mossel bay pincushion, a South African beauty.
Leucospermum praecox (Mossel Bay Pincushion), gets its name from its resemblance to the pincushions used in sewing to store pins or needles. The flowers of Leucospermum praecox, polinated by birds, beautifully display its filaments and anthers as needles in a pincushion. Unfortunately the Mossel bay pincushion, that can be mainly found in the sourthern coastal platform in the west of Mossel Bay, Western Cape, South Africa [2] is among the endangered species that are threatened by the habitat loss [2].
In spite the beauty of this herb, no scientific evidence has been found yet of any medicinal properties, either as part of traditional herbal remedies or as source of medicinal active constituents used as part of pharmaceutical medicines, other plants from its family do have certain medicinal properties. Image: Leucospermum praecox by Derek Keats under Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-SA 2.0).
LEUCOSPERMUM PRAECOX
Family: Proteaceae
Genus: Leucospermum
Other names: Mossel bay pincushion.
Other herbs from the same family, as Leucospermum cordifolium, have showed certain antimicrobial activities as part of honeys produced from plants grown in South Africa [3], at least that's what a study performed on honeys produced from the blossoms of Eucalyptus cladocalyx (Bluegum) trees, the indigenous South African plant Leucospermum cordifolium (Pincushion), a mixture of wild heather shrubs, mainly Erica species (Fynbos) and a Leptospermum scoparium (Manuka) honey shows, however their antimicrobial activity wasn't extraordinarily high in comparison to other honeys [3].
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