Protea pityphylla, also known as Ceres sugarbush or mountain rose (along with a number of similar species), is a flowering shrub of the genus Protea, in the family Proteaceae. The plant is endemic to the southwestern Cape Region of South Africa. Names In the Afrikaans language the vernacular names hekskaamblom and less specifically skaamblom have been recorded for this plant, skaamblom being a name it shares with other similar proteas. The name skaamblom translates as 'shy' or 'bashful' flower, and possibly refers to the nodding, downward-pointing inflorescences. It was first attested in the 1929 article titled Gewone Plantname in die Distrik Riversdal by Muir in Die Huisgenoot for the species Protea nana. Taxonomy Protea pityphylla was first described by Edwin Percy Phillips in 1910. It was collected 27 years earlier, in 1883, by the British botanist A. A. Bodkin (collection #6089) at an elevation of 549 metres on the Michell's Pass through the Skurweberge. When his collections were studied at the Bolus Herbarium, they were first identified as 'Protea cf. canaliculata (in 1886), until Phillips recognised it as a new species. Phillips neglected to supply a clear type for any of the species he described in 1910, but in 1912 Otto Stapf designated three sets of specimens to typify Phillips' new species: the Bodkin collection and two collections by Peter MacOwan made at the same locality, including one in his personal herbarium (#2907). Syntypes of Bodkin's original collections are housed at the herbarium at Kew and the Bolus Herbarium. MacOwan also exchanged specimen sheets to herbaria around the world with his Herbarium Normale Austro–Africanum series, which he used to build up the collection of the Government Herbarium at Cape Town. One of the sheets in this series, #913, is a collection of this species from the same Pass collected by MacOwan likely sometime in the late 1880s, was also used by Phillips, and designated as a syntype by Stapf -albeit that there were copies in many herbaria. P. pityphylla was classified in Protea section Pinifolia by Tony Rebelo in 1995, what he calls the "rose sugarbushes", along with P. acuminata, P. canaliculata, P. nana, P. scolymocephala and P. witzenbergiana. Description This plant is a shrub which can grow to become up to in height, which can grow with either somewhat erect branches or branches which have a more sprawling form. The stems are glabrous. Plants can flower from about five