Leucadendron argenteum R.Br.

Horticultural & Botanical History

‘Long as this plant has been cultivated in gardens, it so rarely produces flowers under cultivation, that a coloured figure of it is now for the first time presented to the public.  Our drawing was made from fine specimens obligingly communicated to us by Mr. Miller, of Bristol, in June last.  Like Mr. Brown, we have not been so fortunate as to see the female inflorescence.  The plant now figured was a male.  At the Cape of Good Hope L. argenteum is of great importance for fire-wood.  Its only native station in the Colony is “the sloping ground at the foot of the eastern side of Table Mountain,” where, and on the northern side, large plantations now occupy the soil.  By the Dutch Colonists it is called Witteboom, or Silver Tree.  In this country it forms a neat ornament of the green-house, where its beautiful silvery leaves furnish a strong but agreeable contrast with the more common green colour of other plants.’  [BR f.979/1826].

History at Camden Park

Protea argentea is marked with a ‘c’ in an 1836 edition of Loddiges’ catalogue held at Camden Park [CPA].  In William Macarthur’s code, used and explained elsewhere, this means grown at Camden.  It is almost certain that it was grown in the gardens around this time but may have been short lived as it did not appear in the catalogues.

Notes