''Grevillea hilliana'', commonly known as white silky oak, white yiel yiel, Hill's silky oak and grey oak, is a species of flowering plant in the family

Proteaceae The Proteaceae form a family of flowering plants predominantly distributed in the Southern Hemisphere. The family comprises 83 genera with about 1,660 known species. Together with the Platanaceae and Nelumbonaceae, they make up the order Pro ...

and is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to eastern Australia. It is a tree with lance-shaped to oblong or lobed adult leaves and cylindrical clusters of large numbers of white to pale green flowers.

Description

''Grevillea hilliana'' is a tree that typically grows to a height of . Young plants usually have divided leaves, mostly long and wide with three to ten linear to lance-shaped lobes long and wide, the lower surface silky-hairy. Adult leaves are lance-shaped to oblong, long and wide, or sometimes divided with four to six oblong to egg-shaped lobes long and wide and silky-hairy on the lower surface. The flowers are arranged in large, cylindrical groups long and are white to pale green, the

pistil Gynoecium (; ) is most commonly used as a collective term for the parts of a flower that produce ovules and ultimately develop into the fruit and seeds. The gynoecium is the innermost whorl of a flower; it consists of (one or more) ''pistils'' ...

long and glabrous. Flowering mainly occurs from July to October, often in other months, and the fruit is a glabrous, oval to elliptic follicle long.

Taxonomy

''Grevillea hilliana'' was first formally described in 1857 by

Ferdinand von Mueller Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, (german: Müller; 30 June 1825 – 10 October 1896) was a German-Australian physician, geographer, and most notably, a botanist. He was appointed government botanist for the then colony of Vict ...

in the '' Transactions of the Philosophical Institute of Victoria'' from specimens collected in "forests at the Pine River of Moreton Bay" by Mueller and Walter Hill. The

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

(''hilliana'') honours Walter Hill.

Distribution and habitat

White silky oak grows in, or near the edges of rainforest in near-coastal areas from sea level to an altitude of and is found from near

Cooktown Cooktown is a coastal town and locality in the Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. Cooktown is at the mouth of the Endeavour River, on Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland where James Cook beached his ship, the Endeavour, for repairs ...

in far northern Queensland to near the Brunswick River in north-eastern New South Wales.

Conservation status

This grevillea is listed as of "least concern" in Queensland but as "endangered" under the New South Wales Government '' Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016''.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q5233148 hilliana Trees of Australia Flora of New South Wales Flora of Queensland Proteales of Australia Taxa named by Ferdinand von Mueller Plants described in 1857