Silver Banksia

A beautiful tree for the urban garden with it’s attractive flowers, silver-backed leaves and gnarled trunk. An  important food source for nectar feeding birds such as Honeyeaters and seed eating birds such as Yellow-tail Black Cockatoos. A very worthwhile plant to bring into our green spaces.

While this tree can be long-lived, banksias sometimes die suddenly without clear explanation. Losses around Mount Alexander Shire have often been due to big swings between drought and waterlogged conditions. Banksia (a.k.a Honeysuckle) woodlands were depicted as widespread in early explorer maps of the Mount Alexander region, but is now extinct in the wild in Mount Alexander region, except from one record near Taradale (Tim Read, pers. comm). Other than that is only present thanks to plantings.