Protea pruinosa, also known as frosted sugarbush or burnished protea, is a flowering shrub which belongs to the genus Protea within the botanical family Proteaceae. The plant is endemic to the southwestern Cape Region of South Africa. Taxonomy Protea pruinosa is one of the last species of Protea discovered by science. It was first discovered and collected in flower in January 1974 by the South African botanist John Patrick Rourke in the Klein Swartberg mountains at the head of a canyon, the Waterkloof, between the peaks of the Toringberg and the Koudeveldsberg, and it was subsequently featured and described as a new species in an article written by Rourke in the South African botanical magazine Flowering Plants of Africa in 1977. The article was illustrated with a painting by the botanical artist Fay Anderson. Rourke's original 1974 exsiccata specimens (Rourke#1406) were distributed over a number of herbaria in South Africa, Europe and the United States, with a specimen sheet in the Compton Herbarium in Cape Town designated as the holotype, and the other sheets as isotypes. Etymology The specific epithet is descriptive: The Latin word 'pruinosa' means 'frosty', and refers to the brilliant white, woolly outer surface of the bracts. Description Protea pruinosa is a cushion-shaped prostrate shrub: it grows sprawling and flat on the ground, the stems forming a dense mat. It grows about to tall, and in diameter. It grows slowly, reaching a reproductive age at some fifteen years of age, when the plant reaches a diameter of . The stems are short and stay flat on the ground. The thick, rigid leaves all point upwards, with their apex towards at the sky. The flowers (florets) are clustered together in a structure called a 'pseudanthium', a special type of inflorescence, which is also called a 'flower head'. A mature P. pruinosa can produce up to seventeen of these flower heads in a season. When these inflorescences fully open they release a pleasant, yeasty scent. The flower head is surrounded by fleshy, petal-like appendages called 'involucral bracts'. These bracts have a white woolly indumentum on their outer surface, but their base and the inner surface is coloured a brilliant carmine. This colour pattern is opposite that of most rodent-pollinated proteas, which usually have flower heads with dark outer bract surfaces and a whitish centre. The plant is monoecious, both sexes appear in each flower. Individual florets have a pistil