Arid Pincushion

Leucospermum calligerum is a shrub of ½–2 m (1½–6 ft) high and up to 3 m (9.8 ft) in circumference, with a single main stem at its foot, wand-shaped stems, branching at wide angles, initially horizontal or directly rising up, generally 23–30 centimetres (0.75–0.98 ft) long, 3–5 mm (0.12–0.20 in) thick when flowering, covered in minute soft crinkly hairs and also with longer soft straight or curvy hairs. Its simple, tough, leathery, grey to olive-colored, oval to long-oval leaves are set alternately, overlapping or more scattered along the branches, and have a blunt or pointy thickened tip, sometimes with two or three very small teeth, with a rounded or narrowing base, 1.8–3.2 cm (0.71–1.26 in) long, and 4¼–8½ mm (0.17–0.33 in) wide, often with distinct veins, greyish due to minute soft crinkly hairs and sometimes with longer soft straight or bend hairs, often felty when young. The hemisphere-shaped flower heads are nearly seated or sit on a stalk of up to 3 cm (1.2 in) long, mostly with two to six together, rarely individually, near the end of the branches. Older clusters of flower heads can be overtopped by young growth and then appear to be placed along a branch. …

L. calligerum is one of the more widely distributed species of Leucospermum and can be found from the Gifberg near Vanrhynsdorp and the Lokenberg south of Nieuwoudtville in the north, to Albertinia in the south east. It grows on hot, dry and well drained sandy flats and steep rocky slopes, mostly weathered Table Mountain sandstone, but also on conglomerates of Cape Granite and Malmesbury Shale, between 15–1,200 m (49–3,937 ft) elevation. They are limited to locations that receive between 25–50 cm (9.8–19.7 in) of rain during the winter and less than 75 cm (30 in) on average per year.

The arid pincushion is visited by birds such as the orange-breasted sunbird Anthobaphes violacea and the Cape sugarbird Promerops cafer, and insects such as beetles, bees and flies. Birds are expected to be the most effective pollinators for non-creeping Leucospermum species. Seeds are ripe about two months after flowering. Attached to each seed is a fleshy ant bread, that is attractive to ants. The ants collect the seeds, take them underground to their nests and eat the ant bread (a seed dispersion strategy called myrmecochory). Plants seldom survive the fires that occur naturally in the fynbos every decade or two. When afterwards the rain carries specific chemicals that are created by the fire underground, the seeds germinate and the species is so "resurrected".