Mimetes

Mimetes, the pagoda, is a genus of evergreen shrubs or small trees 0.5–6 m (1.6–19.7 ft) high, with thirteen species assigned to the family Proteaceae. This genus, as with other proteas, is popular with nectarivorous birds such as the Cape sugarbird and several sunbird species. All species of Mimetes are endemic to the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa.

The thirteen species currently assigned to the genus Mimetes are evergreen, low shrubs to small trees of 0.5–6 m (1.6–20 ft) high. Its leaves lack stipules, are set alternately along the branches, without a leaf stalk, at an upward angle or more or less overlapping, long inverted egg-shaped, oval or long diamond-shaped, 1.5–8.25 cm (0.6–3.2 in) long and 0.5–4 cm (0.2–1.6 in) wide, with an entire margin, thickened at the tip and often with mostly three teeth clustered close together. After the flower heads in the axils of the leaves have been shed, the dormant growing tip is activated and produces the next inflorescence. It has twelve homologous sets of chromosomes (2n=24).

The flower heads are grouped in cylindric aggregations in the axils of the higher leaves of the stems. The bracts that subtend each flower head are either small and woody, or enlarged, bright in colour, papery or fleshy. The individual flower heads contain three to thirty-five flowers, relatively few compared to many other Proteaceae genera. This, and the sometimes bright coloration of the leaves and bracts in the inflorescence, result in the flower head functioning more or less as a single flower. Three types of flower head are distinguished: brush, tube and gullet. The flower heads of most species are of the brush-type. Flower heads of the brush-type have large perianths, pollen presenters and often bracts in bright and contrasting yellow, white or red. The subtending leaves do not differ from other leaves and remain green throughout flowering. In the tube-type flower heads, that only occurs in M. pauciflora, the number of flowers per head is reduced down to three (rarely four), and the involucral bracts are short. The bright yellow bracteoles of the three flowers together form a long, straight and narrow tube, from which only the perianth limbs and pollen presenters extend. The tube-type flower head functions comparable to tube-shaped corollas, such as in the large-flowered Erica species. The gullet-type flower head uniquely occurs in M. cucullatus and M. fimbriifolius. It functions in the same way as Acanthus and many Scrophulariaceae and Lamiaceae flowers. The bracts at the side of the stem are smaller, those in sight from the side are enlarged, while the leaf that is subtending the flower head above forms a brightly coloured hood. When the flowers open, the styles grow longer, break free from the perianth, and are pressed in the overhead leaf.

The individual flowers are 4-merous, star-symmetrical, and contain both male and female organs. The perianth is cylinder-shaped in the bud. The lower part, where the lobes remain merged when the flower has opened (called tube), is mostly becoming hairless, very short, circular to somewhat square in cross section or inflated. In the middle part (or claws) where the perianth is split lengthwise, the lobes are thread-shaped and softly hairy. In the upper part (or limbs), which enclosed the pollen presenter in the bud, the four lobes are line-shaped, pointy or pointed, continue to be softly hairy or becoming hairless. The anthers are line-shaped with a pointy tip, directly merged with the base of the limbs without a filament. From the perianth emerges a style that is circular in cross section, curved when breaking open the bud, but eventually straight. The slightly thickened part at the tip of the style called pollen presenter is line-shaped, with a pointy of pointed tip, cylinder-shaped, egg-shaped or head-shaped, with a ring distinguishing its base from the style. The ovary is slender, softly hairy and contains one pendulous ovule, it is difficult to determine where it merges into the style. It is subtended by four blunt or line- to thread-shaped scales.

In 1807, Richard Anthony Salisbury in his contribution to William Hooker's book The Paradisus Londinensis, divided Leucadendron, as defined by Carl Linnaeus and that contained rather divers forms, over several new genera and erected, amongst others, the genus Mimetes.

Two years later Salisbury assigned five species to Mimetes in a book by Joseph Knight titled On the cultivation of the plants belonging to the natural order of Proteeae, M. fimbriifolius, M. splendidus, M. argenteus, M. hirtus and M. palustris. In 1810, Robert Brown in his review called On the natural order of plants called Proteaceae newly described M. pauciflorus, M. capitulatus, and reassigned Leucadendron cucullatum, creating the new combination M. cucullatus. But he also collapsed Salisbury's genus Diastella into Mimetes. Carl Meissner, who contributed a section on the Proteaceae in 1856 to the series Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis by Alphonse Pyramus de Candolle, integrated both Diastella and Orothamnus as the sections Pseudomimetes and Orothamnus, and assigning Mimetes as defined by Salisbury to the section Eumimetes. In 1911, Edwin Percy Phillips described M. saxatilis. Phillips and John Hutchinson disagreed with Brown and Meissner, and in 1912 returned to Salisbury's delimitation, restoring both Diastella and Orothamnus. Phillips described M. stokoei in 1922 and M. hottentoticus in 1923. In 1982, John Patrick Rourke described M. arboreus, and finally in 1988 M. chrysanthus.

Comparison of homologous DNA has increased the insight in the phylogenetic relationships between the Proteaceae. It shows that Mimetes belongs to a group that further only consists of genera endemic to the Cape Floristic Region, that together constitute the subtribe Leucadendrinae. There is doubt whether Mimetes is monophyletic, since a study that looked at few genes, and included five of the species of Mimetes, two of Diastella and Orothamnus zeyheri, indicates that some Mimetes species may be more related to these two genera than to other Mimetes species. Leucospermum is most related to the Mimetes-group. A subgroup of Paranomus, Vexatorella, Sorocephalus and Spatalla is the sister group to the Leucospermum-Mimetes subgroup. The following tree represent those insights.

The genus name Mimetes (Μιμητές) is Ancient Greek and means "imitators", because its leaves are similar to those of several other genera. The word is masculine in Greek and Salisbury conjugated the species names accordingly. Robert Brown, and Phillips and Hutchinson made feminine epithets. Rourke in 1984 agreed with Salisbury. The species are called pagoda for their tiered compound inflorescences in English, and stompie (small stump) probably for the charcoaled remains sticking out of the ground after a fire in Afrikaans.