Protea parvula or the dainty sugarbush is a low-growing shrub of below 20 cm in height producing trailing stems. The plants often live long, resprouting multistemmed from a thick underground rootstock or lignotuber.
The specific epithet, parvula, is derived from the Latin word parvus meaning small. P. parvula is one of the smallest summer rainfall proteas in South Africa.
The long narrow leaves are nearly stalkless and variably shaped: oblong, linear, elliptic, lanceolate or oblanceolate, occasionally somewhat sickle-shaped. The leaves become up to 2 cm wide and 14 cm long. The hairless blades are slightly blue-green, the margins often faintly red. The leaves may be dense at stem-tips.
Flowering in summer to early autumn, the seeds released soon after ripening mostly survive the fires typical of its region. Birds pollinate the flowers and wind disperses the seed.
The species distribution is in Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Eswatini along the escarpments and plateaus.
The habitat is short grassland rocky terrain at high altitude, receiving summer rainfall on acid soil. The plant is considered near threatened in its habitat early in the twenty first century due to forest plantations, mining, invading plant species and too frequent fires (Rourke, 1980; iNaturalist; http://protea.worldonline.co.za; http://redlist.sanbi.org).