Banksia occidentalis
species of plant
Banksia occidentalis, commonly known as the red swamp banksia, is a species of shrub or small tree that is endemic to the south coast of Western Australia. It has smooth bark, linear, sparsely serrated leaves, golden flowers in a cylindrical spike, and later up to sixty follicles in each spike.
Description
Banksia occidentalis is a shrub or small tree that typically grows to a height of 1–7 m (3 ft 3 in – 23 ft 0 in) and has smooth bark but does not form a lignotuber. The leaves are linear, sparsely serrated, whorled, 40–130 mm (1.6–5.1 in) long, 2–3 mm (0.08–0.1 in) wide on a petiole 1–5 mm (0.04–0.2 in) long. The flowers are arranged in a cylindrical spike 40–140 mm (1.6–5.5 in) long and 65–75 mm (2.6–3.0 in) wide at flowering. The flowers are gold-coloured with red styles, the perianth 17–18 (0.7 in) long and the pistil 29–35 mm (1.1–1.4 in) long and hooked. Flowering occurs from April to May or from August to November or January and the follicles are elliptical, 1–18 mm (0.04–0.71 in) long, 4–7 mm (0.16–0.28 in) high and 3–7 mm (0.12–0.28 in) wide. Up to sixty follicles form in each spike, the old flowers having fallen.
Taxonomy and naming
Banksia occidentalis was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown in Transactions of the Linnean Society of London. The specific epithet (occidentalis) is a Latin word meaning 'western', referring to the distribution of this species relative to the related B. spinulosa.
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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.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2882727. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1810.
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This entry incorporates text from “Banksia occidentalis” 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.