Banksia serrata

A tree capable of reaching 20 metres tall in the wild (although such trees will be old) and a canopy spread to 10 m. It is one of the iconic and easily identifiable banksias of the east coast of Australia.

It grows along most of the entire coast of NSW, extending into the central tablelands (Blue Mountains area), extending north to the Sunshine Coast in Qld and south to Victoria and Tasmania.

It is a common tree on sandstone outcrop and sandy soils, in dry sandstone ridgetop woodland and gully forest. Also grows in sandy coastal heath and shrublands. Not usually found on other soil types. The bark has a distinctive warty, gnarled appearance.

The leaves are alternate to whorled, and with a leather, almost-plastic texture, oblong to narrow-obovate, to 20 cm long and 4 cm wide. The lower surface is much paler than the mid green upper surface. The conspicuous feature is the serrated leaf margin.

The inflorescences of banksias are generally referred to as spikes or a spike-like structure which consists of fused racemes of paired flowers (hence it gets referred to as a conflorescence). There can be 100s of flowers in each spike. The flowers of banksias have 4 tepals (petals or sepals) in a tubular formation, 4 anthers hidden inside and an elongated carpel (female part) where the style extends outwards forming the edge of the spike (somewhat similar to individual grevillea and hakea flowers).

In this species, the spikes are generally to 20 cm long (this author has observed up to 40 cm in the field on old plants) and about 10 cm wide, with each flower thin but up to 5 cm long, yellow to creamy-green in colour.

The spike then turns into a cone-like structure of follicles; a fruit which splits open on one side. Each follicle has one or two winged seeds which is actually a fruit in itself called a samara. The follicles can take a long time to mature and open, usually needing a fire. Each “cone” can produce a fair amount of seed. In this species, follicles are about 3 cm long.