Linnaeus named Protea repens in the middle of the eighteenth century. The appearance of the plant parts and possibly related information that reached him in Sweden from the Cape Colony suggested a creeping plant, hence P. repens, derived from the Latin word repens meaning to creep or to crawl.
Thunberg, student and follower of Linnaeus, later named the plant P. mellifera, meaning honey-bearing. This was done on account of the copious production of sweet nectar by the pollinator-dependent flowerheads. This juice was eagerly collected by early colonists, the native population and today still by honeybees.
Unfortunately, the date of the more appropriate name was documented later, therefore not retained in accordance with the conventions of botanical nomenclature (Rourke, 1980; Andrew, 2017).