The most frequent pollinator of all Elephantorrhiza species is the African honeybee, Apis mellifera. Other insects that seemingly do not aid in the pollination of the plant's flowers, such as beetles, can be seen eating the flowers. The most common beetle found pillaging the flowers is the fruit chafer, Pachnoda sinuata, in the insect family Scarabaeidae. Flowers of Elephantorrhiza species provide only pollen as reward. Anther glands are present at the tips of anthers, but they soon fall off or are removed by visiting insects. This is a relatively rare characteristic within the Mimosoideae and their exact function remains a mystery. Since they occur on the reproductive parts of the plant they must presumably somehow aid in pollination by either attracting pollinators or, as some have suggested, act as pseudopollen - a mimetic device to attract pollinators to receptive stigmas before and after real pollen award is available.

The suffrutescent habit of E. elephantina can be explained as an adaptation to the environment , a trait that a plant evolved deliberately in order to survive certain environmental constraints. The main ecological driving forces behind the development of this extraordinary habit are frost and fire throughout the species' natural distribution. Herbaceous plants are commonly believed to have been derived from more ancient woody forms through reduction and simplification. Therefore, the suffrutescent habit may also be viewed (from a geological time scale point of view) as something like an intermediate form where the climatic cooling in the Tertiary period effectively stunted woody plants until their aerial parts persisted for no more than a single growing season. This happened over such a long period that plants had more than enough time to gradually adapt to changing environmental conditions.

Burtt Davy was the first to note that suffrutescent taxa on the Highveld are the only true (indigenous) 'trees' of the open veld, since 'conventional trees' (with large woody aerial parts) only occur in sheltered kloofs, sinkholes and on rocky outcrops or hills.