Inside a Grevillea / Hakea Flower

Greetings fellow foxies,
                                   have you ever wondered why grevilleas and hakeas have strange-shaped flowers, often with large curved styles, which stick out from the rest of the flower? If so, read on.
Styles end with large terminal stigmas (female pollination part), which stick out from from four curved tepals (combined petals/sepals) tthat have anthers at the end.
How can insect or bird pollinators contact the widely separated anthers and stigma to fertilise the flowers?
The answer is a sneaky trick called secondary pollen presentation :-  pollen from the anthers is transferred to the stigma,  which then functions as the pollen presenting organ for pollination. 
Images show flowers progressively opening. Here is a sequence

1. The flower starts as closed tube (corolla), which consists of four tepals (petal or sepal) surrounding the style. The bulge at the end of the tube contains the stigma and the anthers together.
2. The style expands and bursts out of the side of the corolla as the stigma remains in the end, where it is coated with pollen from anthers.
3. The stigma is released from the corolla as the tepals fold back and springs up with its coating of pollen.
4. After a day or two, pollen on the stigma dies and a receptive surface emerges  to be pollinated by pollen from other plants.

Grevillea Robyn Gordon

Hakea undulata

Butterfly drinking nectar

Pollinators attracted to nectar produced in a nectary at the base of the style transfer pollination to and from the stigma as they bend down to drink nectar. Flowers with long styles suit large pollinators like birds, while shorter ones are more suited to insects. Many grevilleas and hakeas have flowers in heads or groups.
​I spent an  hour watching insects watching a flowering Hakea lissocarpha, which has profuse groups of flowers with short straight styles and a strong almost cloying aroma. The flowers were alive with insects, which barged their way through the flowers in search of nectar. I saw 2 butterfly, three fly, two wasp, and two bee species, and a honeyeater.

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Hairy maggot blowfly

Australian painted lady

Labium sp. wasp

Here are a few weird and wonderful species 

Tassel grevillea Foxes Lair

Grevillea uncinulata Yilliminning town reserve

Tangled grevillea Foxes Lair

Reference