Leaf and bract translucence of Protea obtusifolia appears against sunlight. The marked difference in bract attractiveness between the upper and lower ones is accentuated by the translucence at the top.
The leaves reach just far enough to expose the brightest of the involucre to the world of pollinators. Protection is counterbalanced against reproduction objectives.
Protea leaves get eaten. Not the choice you would make for your green salad, but fortunately there are those that choose differently, so cut them some slack. The spread of tastes in food has been crafted through evolution to go everywhere, regulating the competition for maximum speciation. Increasing diversity accommodates continually more life forms and thereby life itself.
While the scramble for everything edible is strong, sometimes ferocious, “vacuums” in the form of neglected biological material and discards are filled by every conceivable particle becoming food to yet another kind of organism. Let it ripen, let it rot: everything that dies is continually being marinated, dried or transformed in some way, (read prepared) to suit the requirements of something different that will suck, bite, ingest or absorb directly.
Every bit of detritus reminds of hunger in some weird and wonderful way in an organism with or without name in the world of people. All to build energy for reproduction, keeping yet another species on the list of the living through generating offspring.
Inside every big or small body there are more tiny bodies, sometimes millions or billions of them, team players that live to sustain or destroy their host, all doing their thing in eating, multiplying and being eaten in their own specialised environments.
Plants perform their food provision service directly, “on the root” while they live, as well as posthumously when all their parts get eaten, transformed and re-used in multifarious ways. Herbivores, be they mammals, insects or whatever, eat the live plants where they grow, as these P. obtusifolia leaves bear testimony.
Transportation and storage being such challenges in this world, so where better than a stomach? Such a handy appliance to have been crafted by trial and error; must have taken time and lots of failed attempts. Today the stomach has morphed into millions of shapes, sizes and types in the large range of species that are blessed with a belly. What thing on earth had the first true stomach, the mother of all bellies?
The ecology is like a multidimensional jigsaw puzzle, continually differentiating more pieces. All the parts live interactively, remaining one puzzle, one system comprising interdependent components, one continuous life.
You are part of it, not a cut above. You have more nieces and nephews than you know or would want to know you.