Banksia falcata, commonly known as prickly dryandra, is a species of prickly, column-shaped shrub that is endemic to Western Australia. It has serrated or pinnatipartite leaves, heads of up to 150 yellow flowers and soft-hairy fruit.
Banksia falcata is a column-shaped shrub that typically grows to a height of but does not form a lignotuber. It has undulating, serrated to pinnatipartite leaves that are wedge-shaped in outline, long and wide on a petiole long, with between seven and thirteen sharply-pointed teeth on each side. The flowers are borne on a head containing between 110 and 150 flowers in each head. There are linear to narrow lance-shaped involucral bracts long covered with rusty, woolly hairs at the base of the head. The flowers have a bright yellow perianth long and a yellow pistil long. Flowering occurs from September to November or January and the follicles are oval, long and covered with soft hairs.[1]
This banksia was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown in the journal Transactions of the Linnean Society of London and given the name Dryandra falcata.[2] In 2007, Austin Mast and Kevin Thiele transferred all the dryandras to the genus Banksia and this species became Banksia falcata.[3] [4] The specific epithet (falcata) is a Latin word meaning "falcate" or "shaped like a scythe or sickle".[5]
Banksia falcata grows in kwongan between the Stirling Range and Esperance in the Avon Wheatbelt, Esperance Plains, Jarrah Forest and Mallee biogeographic regions.