From the center of each flower emerges a long pale yellow style with a pink thickened tip (both later turning carmine) that is bent slightly clockwise, giving the entire head the appearance of a pincushion.

The bracts subtending the flower head are pointy oval in shape, 1–1½ cm (0.4–0.6 in) long and 5–8 mm (0.20–0.32 in) wide, cartilaginous near its base and papery towards the tip, with a regular row of short equal length hairs along its edges and a tuft of longer, stiff and straight hairs at the tip.

The lobes in the middle part (or claws), where the perianth is split lengthwise, curve back on their base when the flower opens, are 9–12 mm (0.36–0.48 in) long, and carry a few slender, spreading hairs.

From the perianth emerges a style of 7–7½ cm (2.8–3.0 in) long, initially yellow but later turning to crimson, and that is slightly obliquely deflected clockwise.

Salisbury described the plant in the Paradisus Londinensis in 1808, and because the specimen that the description was based up on, the colour plate in this publication serve as lectotype.

In 1810, Robert Brown published the name Protea villosiuscula that had been suggested by English naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences Joseph Banks, but without providing a proper description.

Protea erosa had been proposed for yet another specimen by Hinrich Lichtenstein, a name that was later published by Kurt Polycarp Joachim Sprengel in 1825, again without providing a proper description.

The species mostly grows on clayey soils produced by the weathering of Cape Granite, but occasionally occurs on Tertiary sand sitting on top of Malmesbury gravel.

It prospers in hot, dry and exposed habitats, often in facing north, with other low shrubs such as renosterbos and kapokbossie at 80–500 m (250–1600 ft) altitude.

When increased temperature fluctuations or charwood chemicals carried underground by seeping rainwater signal that the surface has been cleared of its cover by a wildfire, the seeds germinate during the early winter.