Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Banksia serrata

Flower heads. Australian Plant Image Index. Photographer Murray Fagg, Joseph Banks Native Plant Reserve, Sutherland

Line drawing. g. leaves. G Thomlinson, National Herbarium of Victoria, © 2021 Royal Botanic Gardens Board

Trunk. Australian Plant Image Index. Photographer Murray Fagg, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, ACT

Tree. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Peter Ollerenshaw, naturally occurring in Booderee Botanic Gardens, Jervis Bay Territory 

Common name

Old-man banksia, Saw banksia

Family

Proteaceae

Where found

Dry forest, woodland, and shrubland. Coast, ranges, and the eastern edge of the tablelands.

Notes

Tree or shrub to 16 m high. Bark thick, warty, more or less friable, grey-brown. Branchlets hairy with pale, velvety hairs, finally becoming hairless. Leaves alternating up the stems, more or less crowded, 5–20 cm long, 10–45 mm wide, upper surface green and shiny, lower surface rusty-hairy, becoming more or less hairless, margins more or less toothed except near the base, tips squared off and with a short mucro. Flower heads 70–200 mm long, of many flowers. Individual flowers creamy-grey, with 4 'petals' each 38–45 mm long, splitting to the base when the flowers are fully open. Styles bent down and outward, cream, remaining on mature cones. Cones 70–200 mm long. Flowering: January–June. Seeds with one wing.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Banksia~serrata (accessed 30 April 2021)