Banksia baueri

''Banksia baueri'', commonly known as the woolly banksia, is a species of shrub that is endemic to the southwest of Western Australia. It has serrated leaves and a distinctively large and hairy looking inflorescence with cream, yellow or brown flowers, and hairy fruit.

Description

''Banksia baueri'' grows as a many-branched spreading shrub reaching high, and wide but does not form a lignotuber. Its bark is thin and grey with long fissures, while new growth is covered in fine pale brown fur. New growth occurs in summer. The leaves are usually narrow egg-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, long and wide with serrated edges, tapering to a petiole long. The inflorescence develops over 5–6 months, and can reach in diameter, high and is borne on a short side branch. The flowers are cream, yellow or brown and hairy, the perianth long and the pistil long with a glabrous style. The fruit is a hairy, elliptical follicle long.

Taxonomy

Robert Brown described ''Banksia baueri'' in 1830, after it had been collected by William Baxter at King Georges Sound in 1829. The description was published in Brown's supplement to his ''Prodromus''. It was named for the brothers Austrian botanical artists Franz and Ferdinand Bauer, Ferdinand having travelled with Brown on his 1801–05 voyage.

Under Brown's taxonomic arrangement, ''B. baueri'' was placed in subgenus ''Banksia verae'', the "True Banksias", because the inflorescence is a typical ''Banksia'' flower spike. ''Banksia verae'' was renamed ''Eubanksia'' by Stephan Endlicher in 1847, and demoted to sectional rank by Carl Meissner in his 1856 classification. Meissner further divided ''Eubanksia'' into four series, with ''B. baueri'' placed in series '' Quercinae'' on the basis of its toothed leaves. When George Bentham published his 1870 arrangement in ''Flora Australiensis'', he discarded Meissner's series, replacing them with four sections. ''B. baueri'' was placed in ''Cyrtostylis'', a heterogeneous section containing 13 species that did not readily fit elsewhere. This arrangement would stand for over a century.

In 1891, Otto Kuntze, in his ''Revisio Generum Plantarum'', rejected the generic name ''Banksia'' L.f., on the grounds that the name ''Banksia'' had previously been published in 1776 as ''Banksia'' J.R.Forst & G.Forst, referring to the genus now known as ''Pimelea''. Kuntze proposed ''Sirmuellera'' as an alternative, referring to this species as ''Sirmuellera baueri''. This application of the principle of priority was largely ignored by Kuntze's contemporaries, and ''Banksia'' L.f. was formally conserved and ''Sirmuellera'' rejected in 1940.

It is placed alone in series ''Banksia'' series ''Bauerinae''. In his 1981 monograph on the genus, Alex George classified it in the reinstated but much-reduced series Quercinae, alongside ''Banksia quercifolia'' and '' B. oreophila''. However he noted its follicles, which are beaked after they open, and cotyledon shape, did not fit with the other taxa and pondered an affinity with '' B. menziesii'' and '' B. sceptrum''

Common names include woolly banksia, possum banksia, woolly-spiked banksia, pussy cat banksia or teddy bear banksia, all of which relate to the large furry flower spikes.

Distribution and habitat

''Banksia baueri'' is found in southern Western Australia in three disjunct areas - from Bremer Bay in the east to Jerdacuttup, on the south Stirling Plains, and to the northwest inland between Kweda and Tarin Rock. Plants grow in shrubland or mallee, on flat or genty sloping ground, on white or grey sand or on shallow sand over laterite or quartzite.

Ecology

A 1985–86 field study in the Fitzgerald River National Park found it to be a main wintertime food source for the nectar-feeding honey possum (''Tarsipes rostratus'').

Use in horticulture

Its unusual flower spikes are an attractive horticultural feature. It requires well-drained soil in full sun or part shade. Seeds do not require any treatment, and take 20 to 49 days to germinate.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2882686

baueri
Endemic flora of Western Australia
Eudicots of Western Australia
Plants described in 1830
Taxa named by Robert Brown (botanist, born 1773)