Kangaroopaws rely on birds to pollinate them. The flowers are basically a long tube with nectar at the base, a bird sticks his little beak in the tube to lick out the nectar and the back of his/her neck is brushed with pollen from the stamens at the entrance of the tube, pretty simple. Now, this would all be pretty pointless if there werent any nectar in the bottom of the flower, to bribe the bird with. Ants do this, they are notorious nectar thieves. They climb up the plant, drink the nectar, leaving none for the birds and do absolutely no pollinating. Pretty scummy deal for the plant, so Kangaroopaws have evolved to help stop this. They have millions of little tiny hairs covering the the flowers and the flower stems. This makes it very difficult for an ant to walk over, think of it as trying to walk over a heap of tangled soft branches that come up to about your knees. You would constantly be tripping and getting your feet stuck. Now imagine you had 6 legs and trying to do that. Its easier to find food elsewhere. So that would be a win for the plant. However as the flower ages and dies, the flowers dry out and the little hairs come loose and rub off easily. When youre a gardener and you have to cut off several hundred of these dead flowers, you end up covered in these little hairs (which is little more then dust to your eyes). Those little hairs are itchy. So itchy like you would not believe, and it gets everywhere. If I know I am deadheading Kangaroopaws at work that day, I take a change of shirt. Ive come home with rashes from scratching myself crazy from these plants sometimes. So yeah, just be mindful of the buggers when you fill your yard with them. Great for attracting birds but shower and change as soon as possible after deadheading them
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