Leucospermum Scarlet Ribbons, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.

This Leucospermum “Scarlet Ribbons” blossom is about 1/4″ across in diameter. These flowers will get a great deal bigger, of course, as my plant matures.

The Leucospermum “Scarlet Ribbons” is a cultivar of the Proteaceae family created using careful hand pollination between 1974 and the early 1980s by Dr. Gert Brits of the Horticultural Research Institute in South Africa. (Click here for more information about the origins of this cultivar.) So you could say the Dr. Brits is the great, great, great grandparent of my beautiful Leucospermum.

The flower is now commonly seen as an “exotic” cut flower. The plant is popular in Japan and Italy as a “throw away” potted plant (but no one is getting my bush!).

On Flickr, JoelDeluxe comments that based on the thumbnail of this photo he thought it was an abstract. Here’s the thumbnail:

I can see what JoelDeluxe means. As with photomacrography itself–and some other things in life–size does matter. It’s interesting how the apparent abstraction in thumbnail size changes at a larger size. As Solitaire1 so nicely puts it, the flower “explodes, but with a gentleness.”

Here, here, and here are some of my other recent photographs of Proteaceae flowers from the San Francisco Botanical Garden.