Banksia elegans

Species of shrub in the family Proteaceae endemic to Western Australia
speciesbox
| name = Elegant banksia
| image = Banksia elegans chris cropped. jpg
| image caption = Cultivated specimen, Perth
| genus = Banksia
| species = elegans
| status = P4
| status system = DECF
| authority = Meisn. |synonyms ref =

A population with particularly large inflorescences existed near Walkaway at the species' northern limit, but was on land cleared for agriculture.

Swiss botanist Carl Meissner described Banksia elegans in 1855, the material having been collected by James Drummond on his sixth collecting trip. He placed it in series Dryandroideae in his 1856 arrangement of the genus on account of its deeply lobed leaves. As they were defined on leaf characters alone, all of Meissner's series were highly heterogeneous. In 1891, Otto Kuntze, in his Revisio Generum Plantarum, rejected the generic name Banksia L. f., on the grounds that the name Banksia had previously been published in 1776 as Banksia J. R. Forst & G. Forst, referring to the genus now known as Pimelea. Kuntze proposed Sirmuellera as an alternative, referring to this species as Sirmuellera elegans. This application of the principle of priority was largely ignored by Kuntze's contemporaries, and Banksia L. f. was formally conserved and Sirmuellera rejected in 1940. George was uncertain of its relationships, though noted that the follicles and seed are not unlike those of B. ilicifolia and B. cuneata, and that it clearly had a shortening of its woody axis in the flower spike. In 2005, Mast, Eric Jones and Shawn Havery published the results of their cladistic analyses of DNA sequence data for Banksia. They inferred a phylogeny greatly different from the accepted taxonomic arrangement, including finding Banksia to be paraphyletic with respect to Dryandra. A new taxonomic arrangement was not published at the time, but early in 2007 Mast and Thiele initiated a rearrangement by transferring Dryandra to Banksia, and publishing B. subg. Spathulatae for the species having spoon shaped cotyledons; in this way they also redefined the autonym B. subg. Banksia. 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. elegans is placed in B. subg. Banksia.

Banksia elegans only occurs only over a area north and west of Eneabba, where it grows in small scattered populations consisting of fewer than 100 plants each. The populations are found between the vicinities of Mt Peron near Jurien Bay and Walkaway, on flat sandplains of less than in elevation. Stands are often found near winter wet depressions. The surrounding vegetation is low shrubland or woodland. Associated species include Banksia attenuata, B. prionotes and B. menziesii. An assessment of the potential impact of climate change on this species found that its range is unlikely to contract and may actually grow, depending on how effectively it migrates into newly habitable areas.

Seeds do not require any treatment, and take 19 to 48 days to germinate.