Leucospermum formosum is a large upright shrub of up to high, from the family Proteaceae. It grows from a single trunk and its branches are greyish felty. The softly felty leaves are lance-shaped to elliptic, long and wide. The flower heads are flattened and about across, and consist of bright yellow flowers from which long, styles emerge which are strongly clockwise bent just below the white, later pink thickened tip. From above, the heads look like turning wheels. It is called silver-leaf wheel-pincushion in English. It flowers during September and October. It is an endemic species of the Western Cape province of South Africa.
Description
The Leucospermum formosum is a large upright shrub of up to high, growing from a single main trunk. The flowering branches are upright, up to thick, and are covered by both short, fine, dense cringy hairs interspersed with long upright hairs of long. The softly felty leaves are lance-shaped to elliptic, long and wide, seated or nearly so, set alternately at an upward angle and somewhat overlapping, in leaves of young plants entire, but later mostly with three deep teeth near the tip.
The flower heads are disc-shaped, about in diameter, set on a stalk of long, are mostly set individually, but sometimes clustered with two or three together. When the flowers open, the styles grow rapidly, first breaking through the perianth claws and curve away from the center of the head, until the pollen presenter also ruptures the limbs at the top of the perianth. The common base has a pointy, narrow cone-shape, is long and across. The bracts subtending the flower head are pointy oval in shape, long and about wide, tightly pressed against the common base and overlapping, thin and papery imbricate, the outer surface initially covered in powdery hairs that soon wear off, and with a regular row of equal length hairs along its edge.
The bract subtending the individual flower is pointy to pointed lance-shaped, enveloping the perianth at its foot, with the margins folded inwards, about long and wide, thickly covered in woolly hairs at its foot, with a regular row of equal length hairs along the edges and a tuft of tough straight hairs at the tip. The 4-merous perianth is about and golden yellow in colour. The lower part, that remains merged when the flower is open, is about long, somewhat compressed sideways, hairless at its foot and slightly powdery higher up. The middle part (or claws), are threat-shaped at their base but somewhat broadening higher up, with long hairs on the outer surface, all strongly curled back after the flower opens. The upper part (or limbs), which enclosed the pollen presenter in the bud, are very narrowly lance-shaped with a pointy tip, each about 7 mm long and 1 mm wide, set with many long soft hair, more of less forming a tuft at the tip. From the centre of the perianth emerges a slender, tapering, initially pale yellow, later amber to bronze coloured style of long, twisted clockwise near the tip. The thickened part at the tip of the style called pollen presenter is initially white, turning pink with age, narrowly cylinder-shaped with a pointy tip, about long, knicked at its base, curved clockwise at about a right angle with the style, with the groove that functions as the stigma across the very tip. The ovary is subtended by four awl-shaped scales of about long.