Banksia Aemula - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

Banksia aemula was called wallum by the Kabi people of the Sunshine Coast, giving rise not only to its common name of wallum banksia but also to the name of the ecological community it grows in. Banyalla is another aboriginal name for the species.

Banksia aemula was collected by Scottish botanist Robert Brown in June 1801 in the vicinity of Port Jackson, and published by him in his 1810 work Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen. The specific name, Latin for 'similar', refers to its similarity to B. serrata. Brown also collected a taller tree-like specimen from Sandy Cape which he called Banksia elatior; the specific name is the comparative form of the Latin adjective ēlātus "elevated".

For many years in New South Wales, the wallum banksia had gone by the scientific name of Banksia serratifolia. Richard Anthony Salisbury had published this binomial name in 1796, which was followed by Otto Kuntze, and then Karel Domin in 1921. Botanist and banksia authority Alex George conclusively established aemula as the correct name to be used in his 1981 revision of the genus. He pointed out that Salisbury's original described the leaves only, was insufficient to diagnose the species and is hence a nomen dubium—the description could have fit juvenile leaves of B. paludosa as well. In fact, Brown himself had been unsure whether serratifolia applied to what he called Banksia aemula. Salisbury's taxon appeared as Banksia serraefolia in Knight's 1809 work On the cultivation of the plants belonging to the natural order of Proteeae, but that entry might also refer to serrata. Where Salisbury got his material is unclear, but John White had sent material to James Edward Smith now held in the Linnean Society marked as B. serratifolia Salisb. as well as B. aemula R.Br.

Under Brown's taxonomic arrangement, B. aemula and B. elatior were 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. aemula 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. aemula was placed in Orthostylis, a somewhat heterogeneous section containing 18 species. This arrangement would stand for over a century.

In 1891, German botanist Otto Kuntze challenged the generic name Banksia L.f., on the grounds that the name Banksia had previously been published in 1775 as Banksia J.R.Forst & G.Forst, referring to the genus now known as Pimelea. Kuntze proposed Sirmuellera as an alternative, republishing B. aemula as Sirmuellera serratifolia. The challenge failed, and Banksia L.f. was formally conserved.