Protea lepidocarpodendron is an upright shrub 2-3 m tall, densely bushy and well-branched from a single main stem. The leaves are upward-pointing and narrowly oblong, hairless when mature with a prominent horny margin, and they are sessile, i.e. they have no stalk.

The Protea flower is not a flower, but a flowerhead or inflorescence, made up of many individual flowers grouped together on a rounded base or receptacle. What look like the 'petals' of the protea 'flower' are modified leaves known as floral or involucral bracts. Look inside the cup of bracts and you'll see many long narrow flowers massed together in the centre.

Each flower is made up of a perianth of 4 segments, 3 of which are fused to form a sheath. When the flower opens, the fourth falls free exposing the style. The anthers are in a slight depression near the tip of the perianth segments, one on the single free segment and three on the three fused segments. Click here for illustration of flower parts

Protea lepidocarpodendron flowerheads are oblong 90-110 mm long x 50-60 mm wide, often concealed by the leaves. There are 5-6 rows of floral bracts. The outer series (seen on the lower part of the flowerhead) are brown, ovate with pointed tips and their outer surfaces are densely covered with silvery close pressed straight hairs and the margins are thickly fringed with long. white hairs.

The inner series are usually creamy white, occasionally pink, oblong to linear with broadly spoon-shaped to rounded tips. They are densely covered in close pressed, purple black hairs from the tips to 20-30 mm down the outer surface of the bracts becoming sparse and silvery towards the base. The margins are fringed with long white and black hairs. The pelt of hair covering the tips of the floral bracts is known as the beard.

When you look inside a newly opened flowerhead, the flowers are tightly bunched together coming to a point in the centre. The flowers open from the outside towards the middle, and as they open, the central mass loosens up and the flowers fluff out. The tips of the perianth segments are also fringed with long creamy-white hairs, and don't fall away when the flower opens but remain upright, concealing the style.

Flowering takes place in late autumn and winter, April to August, peaking in June.

The fruit is a small dry hairy nut. Seeds are held inside the flower until the branch, or bush, dies. For harvesting purposes, the seeds should be left on the bush to ripen for a period of about seven months. Only a few viable seeds are produced per head.

This species is occasionally confused with Protea neriifolia. At one stage, P. neriifolia was mistakenly thought to grow on the Peninsula based on an incorrect identification of a pink variant of P. lepidocarpodendron collected in Platteklip Gorge on Table Mountain . If in doubt, take a closer look at the outer surfaces of the upper part of the inner involucral bracts - in P. lepidocarpodendron they are covered in purple-black downy hair. P. neriifolia has fine silver hairs below the beard.

An even easier way to tell them apart is to look at the outer series of floral bracts, i.e. those that are lower down on the flowerhead. In P. lepidocarpodendron they are brown while the inner (higher) ones are white or pink. In P. neriifolia they are all the same colour.