Banksia formosa
Banksia formosa, commonly known as showy dryandra, is a species of shrub that is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It has pinnatipartite leaves with up to forty triangular lobes on each side, up to more than two hundred, conspicuous golden orange flowers and up to sixteen egg-shaped follicles in each head.
Description
Banksia formosa is an erect shrub that typically grows to a height of but does not form a lignotuber. It has hairy branchlets and leaves that are broadly linear in outline, pinnatipartite, long and wide on a petiole long. There are between thirty and forty-five more or less triangular lobes on each side of the leaves. The flowers are borne on a head containing between 100 and 220 flowers in each head. There are oblong to egg-shaped involucral bracts long at the base of the head. The flowers have a golden orange perianth long and a yellow pistil long. Flowering occurs in May or from September to December and the fruit is a glabrous follicle long. Each head may have up to thirteen follicles.Taxonomy and naming
This species was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown who gave it the name Dryandra formosa and published the description in the Transactions of the Linnean Society of London.In 2007, Austin Mast and Kevin Thiele transferred all the dryandras to the genus Banksia and this species became Banksia formosa. The specific epithet is a Latin word meaning "beautiful on account of form".