Could this be Australia’s rarest Banksia? Banksia vincentia (Proteaceae), a new species known from fourteen plants from south-eastern New South Wales, Australia

Abstract

Possession of hooked, distinctively discolorous styles, a broadly flabellate common bract subtending each flower pair, and a lignotuber place a putative new species, Banksia sp. Jervis Bay, in the B. spinulosa complex. Phenetic analysis of individuals from all named taxa in the B. spinulosa complex, including B. sp. Jervis Bay, based on leaf, floral, seed and bract characters support recognition of this species, which is described here as Banksia vincentia M.L.Stimpson & P.H.Weston. Known only from fourteen individuals, B. vincentia is distinguished by its semi-prostrate habit, with basally prostrate, distally ascending branches from the lignotuber, and distinctive perianth colouring. Its geographical location and ecological niche also separate it from its most similar congeners. IntroductionThe Banksia spinulosa complex has a complicated taxonomic history (Table 1). Smith (1793) first described and named B. spinulosa Sm., and subsequent botanists named two close relatives, B. collina R.Br. and B. cunninghamii Sieber ex Rchb. (Brown 1810, Reichenbach 1827). George (1981) reduced B. collina and B. cunninghamii to varieties in his circumscription of B. spinulosa. The addition of B. spinulosa var. neoanglica (George 1988), brought the number of generally recognised taxa in the complex to four. George (1999), considered the Banksia spinulosa complex to be part of a larger taxon with hooked styles, B. series Spicigerae, which included the eastern Australian B. ericifolia, as well as five Western Australian species. The monophyly of George's series Spicigerae was corroborated by Thiele and Ladiges' (1996) morphology-based cladistic analysis and weakly so by Mast's (1998) analysis of an ITS nrDNA alignment. Mast and Givnish's (2002) molecular phylogenetic analysis of cpDNA sequences strongly confirmed the monophyly of the B. spinulosa complex and found a well-supported sister group relationship between B. spinulosa sensu lato and B. ericifolia, but moderate support for the eastern Australian species of B. series Spicigerae being more closely related to the eastern Australian B. series Salicinae, than to the Western Australian members of B. series Spicigerae. The B. spinulosa complex is characterised by four morphological synapomorphies according to Thiele and Ladiges (1996): presence of a lignotuber (secondarily lost in B. cunninghamii), a seed having a raphe beak that is much shorter than the wing (a reversal from a raphe beak that is half the length of the wing, which is a synapomorphy for B. series Spicigerae), a broadly flabellate common bract subtending each flower pair, and a discolorous style (basally green or cream becoming red to maroon to purple, to dark purple or black in the apical 1/3-2/3, further transformed to green in B. collina) Within Banksia, the last two states were each derived once, according to Thiele and Ladiges' (1996) analysis of their complete dataset. Species in the Banksia spinulosa complex are not the only members of the tribe Banksiae that have style colour patterns that can rea...

A turn in species conservation for hairpin banksias: demonstration of oversplitting leads to better management of diversity

“…The critically endangered, iconic species Banksia vincentia Stimpson & P.H. Weston (Proteaceae: Auld and Weston, 2020 ) consisted of a single population of 14 individuals when it was described (Stimpson et al, 2014 ). It belongs to the morphologically complex group known as the hairpin banksias ( B. spinulosa s.l.…”