BA'NKSIA, an Australian genus of plants belonging to the natural order Proteacece. It was named in compliment to Sir Joseph Banks. It consists of bushes or less frequently of small trees, with their branches growing in an umbellate manner. The leaves are hard and dry, and in young plants always cut at the edges, but in old specimens undivided. They have a dull green colour on their upper side, and are usually white, or very pale green, on the lower. The flowers are long, narrow, tubular, coloured calyxes, without corolla, and with only four stamens lodged in their concave points. They are collected into oblong heads, often consisting of 600 or more, closely arranged, and do not fall off when the blooming is over, but wither, become brown, and adhere to the axis of the head. Very few of them are fertile ; the greater part are altogether abortive, and form a sort of coarse fibrous covering to the singular 2-valved fruit, which is thick and woody, contains two black-winged seeds, and when it.sheds them opens like an oyster, or any other bivalve shell.
These plants are found in sandy forest-land, or on rocks, over the whole known continent of Australia, but chiefly beyond the tropic.
They are called by the colonists Honeysuckle Trees, and are considered in New South Wales as evidence of had land ; but in the Swan River colony they occupy the most fertile tracts. Many species are now cultivated in the conservatories of Europe, where they are much esteemed for their handsome foliage and singular heads of flowers.
The plant In the foreground Is the Red Banksia of King George's sound, and the other the Fellow Bankria of the Gulf of Carpentaria, from sketches made on the spot.
None of them appear to bo of much value for timber, although they make good fire-woott B. camper and B. serrate (which last is said to grow 30 feet high, with a stem measuring a foot and a half in diameter) are the largest species which have been mentioned by travellers on the east coast. On the west coast, in Swan River colony, B. gee ad is reaches 50 feet in height, with a trunk 2} feet in diameter.
A considerable quantity of honey is secreted by their flowers, and collected by the natives of King George's Sound, who are extremely fond of it.