Grevillea robusta
species of plant
Grevillea robusta, commonly known as the southern silky oak, silk oak or silky oak, silver oak or Australian silver oak, is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is a tree with deeply dissected, divided leaves, golden yellow to orange flowers with red blotches and flattened, elliptic to oval fruit.
Description
Grevillea robusta is a fast-growing tree that typically grows to a height of 8–40 m (26–131 ft) with a single stem and dark grey, furrowed bark. Its leaves are 10–34 cm (3.9–13.4 in) long and 90–150 mm (3.5–5.9 in) wide and deeply dissected with 11 to 24 primary lobes, sometimes with up to five further divisions, the end lobes oblong to elliptic or almost triangular, 5–50 mm (0.20–1.97 in) long and 2–10 mm (0.079–0.394 in) wide. Many of the leaves are lost before flowering.
The flowers are arranged in one-sided, toothbrush-like groups, sometimes branched, 12–16 cm (4.7–6.3 in) long, each flower on a pedicel 7.5–16 mm (0.30–0.63 in) long. The carpel (the female part) of each flower has a stalk 21–28 mm (0.83–1.10 in) long. The flowers are glabrous and mostly yellowish orange, with reddish blotches. Flowering occurs from September to November and the fruit that follows is a glabrous follicle.
Taxonomy and naming
Grevillea robusta was first formally described in 1830 by Robert Brown after an unpublished description by Allan Cunningham.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Grevillea robusta” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1989614. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1830.
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This entry incorporates text from “Grevillea robusta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.