The flowerhead of Protea nitida in picture has reached the stage when the style bodies are bulging outwards, inside the cup formed by the upper involucral bracts. They are exerting force to wriggle free from their perianth covers and expose the pollen presenters at their tips to function as pollen transfer stations.
In the first transfer at the style tip stations, initially called pollen presenters, pollen grains of their own anthers are despatched by visiting pollinators to flowers elsewhere. In the second transfer the same tips, by then called stigmas, act in recipient roles, the incoming pollen fertilising their own ovules below. This completes the cross-pollination sequence.
The current stage is probably the prettiest in the P. nitida flowerhead sequence. Unfortunately for human admirers this look doesn't last long before the styles escape from the perianths. The brevity is, however, fortunate for the plants, as people's predilection for picking flowers tends to rob the plant of fulfilling its primary mission of producing viable seed.
The plant's secondary mission involves feeding its pollination service providers, those avidly hungry birds and insects bound by the long-standing, natural agreement of food for pollination. It also translates to pollen as food.
Flowers are not there for wandering human sightseers making little noises of delight when enthralled by natural beauty, followed by ruining the mission of flowers when they get picked.
If this wasn't so, the Pope declaring Jupiter's moons non-existent after Galileo discovered them using his telescope, would have been right! That outdated belief system was built on the notion that everything existed in the world to serve humanity in some way. What did not serve man did not exist!
Insight erodes arrogance, albeit slowly in our case. Humanity's centrality illusion is making way in philosophy for the universe coping without meaning invented by one of its unstable creatures.