Proteaceae translates to “plants having the nature of change”

The Proteaceae family is an ancient group of southern hemisphere flowering plants with an incredible diversity of forms.

Interestingly it was Carl Linneaus “the father of modern taxonomy” (the system of naming and classification used in biology) who named the family after Proteus, a Greek sea god who could change his form at will. There are a lot of different flower structures in the Proteaceae family (just think about all the different shapes of Grevillea flowers) and it is common to have a variety of leaf forms on the same Proteaceae plant. But it was the vastly different appearance of male and female Leucadendrom argenteum species that inspired the name Proteaceae