Banksia Grossa - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The first known specimen collection of B. grossa was made by botanist Fred W. Humphreys in 1965. Alex George has expressed surprise that it was not collected by earlier visitors to the area, speculating that "perhaps they were diverted by its similarity to B. leptophylla and B. sphaerocarpa." George formally described the species in his 1981 monograph "The genus Banksia L.f. (Proteaceae)", based on a specimen collected by him on the Brand Highway, 76 km north of Regans Ford, on 14 May 1969. He placed it in subgenus Banksia because of its flower spike; section Oncostylis because its styles are hooked; and the resurrected series Abietinae, which he constrained to contain only round-fruited species. It was placed in phyletic order between B. micrantha and B. leptophylla. The specific epithet is from the Latin grossus ("coarse") and refers to the leaves, flowers and fruit, all of which George observed were more coarse than other members of B. ser. Abietinae.

George's arrangement remained current until 1996, when Kevin Thiele and Pauline Ladiges published an arrangement informed by a cladistic analysis of morphological characteristics. They retained George's subgenera and many of his series, but discarded his sections. Banksia ser. Abietinae was found to be very nearly monophyletic, and so was retained. It further resolved into four subclades, so Thiele and Ladiges split it into four subseries. Banksia grossa appeared as the most basal member of the second of these:

This clade became the basis for the new subseries Sphaerocarpae, which Thiele defined as containing those species with lignotubers, styles loosely curling around the infructescence (although this trait was reversed in B. micrantha), and "transversely aligned cells of the seed wing inner face". The species other than B. grossa also have shouldered follicles.

Questioning the emphasis on cladistics in Thiele and Ladiges' arrangement, George published a slightly modified version of his 1981 arrangement in his 1999 treatment of Banksia for the Flora of Australia series of monographs. The placement of B. grossa was the same as in 1981, except that B. telmatiaea was moved to set between it and B. leptophylla. The placement of B. grossa in George's 1999 arrangement may be summarised as follows:

Banksia

B. subg. Banksia

B. sect. Banksia (9 series, 50 species, 9 subspecies, 3 varieties)

B. sect. Coccinea (1 species)

B. sect. Oncostylis

B. ser. Spicigerae (7 species, 2 subspecies, 4 varieties)

B. ser. Tricuspidae (1 species)

B. ser. Dryandroideae (1 species)

B. ser. Abietinae

B. sphaerocarpa (5 varieties)

B. micrantha

B. grossa

B. telmatiaea

B. leptophylla (2 varieties)

B. lanata

B. scabrella

B. violacea

B. incana

B. laricina

B. pulchella

B. meisneri (2 subspecies)

B. nutans (2 varieties)

B. subg. Isostylis (3 species)

Since 1998, Austin Mast has been publishing results of ongoing cladistic analyses of DNA sequence data for the subtribe Banksiinae. His analyses suggest a phylogeny that is very different from George's arrangement. Banksia grossa was inferred to be sister to a polytomous clade consisting of B. leptophylla, B. telmatiaea, B. scabrella and B. lanata:

Early in 2007, Mast and Thiele initiated a rearrangement of Banksia by merging Dryandra into it, and publishing B. subg. Spathulatae for the taxa having spoon-shaped cotyledons. They foreshadowed publishing a full arrangement once DNA sampling of Dryandra was complete; in the meantime, if Mast and Thiele's nomenclatural changes are taken as an interim arrangement, then B. grossa is placed in B. subg. Spathulatae.