HoneyHQ

Banksia

BanksiaProteaceaeShrub

A genus of around 170 Australian shrubs and small trees whose cylindrical flower spikes hold hundreds of individual flowers and produce nectar in extraordinary quantity — enough to feed birds and mammals as well as insects. The honey possum, a tiny marsupial that lives on almost nothing but nectar and pollen, depends on banksias entirely, which is a good indicator of how much sugar these plants put out.

Caution

Highly susceptible to Phytophthora cinnamomi, an introduced root pathogen killing banksia and jarrah at landscape scale in Western Australia. Do not move soil or plants between sites in affected regions.

Value to bees

Nectar
Very high
Pollen
High
As a honey crop
Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years
Which bees, and why
Introduced honey bees are latecomers to a system built for honeyeaters, pygmy possums and honey possums. Competition between honey bees and native nectar-feeding vertebrates for banksia nectar is a live and unresolved conservation question in Western Australia.

Hundreds of small open flowers massed on a spike, with nectar freely accessible to insects, birds and mammals alike.

Worth knowing
Top nectar production in the catalogue for sheer volume per flower head, delivered in the Australian cool season when little else is open.

Flowering

In flower
March to August (southern hemisphere)

Autumn and winter for the coastal eastern species, which makes banksia one of very few substantial cool-season Australian flows and unusually valuable for it.

When nectar flows
Exceptional. A single spike can produce several millilitres of nectar over its flowering, and the plants are built for vertebrate pollinators that need far more sugar than an insect does.
Year-to-year variation
Reliable where banksia woodland survives, and the resource is shrinking with clearance and with the root pathogen Phytophthora cinnamomi.

What it does to the honey

Banksia nectar produces a dark, malty, distinctly savoury honey with a saline mineral edge — closer in register to a honeydew than to a floral honey.

Growing it

Conditions
Full sun, extremely sharp drainage, and low-phosphorus soil. Banksias are killed by ordinary garden fertiliser, which is the commonest reason they fail in cultivation.
Size
From 30 cm prostrate species to 25 m trees.
Native range
Australia, with the great majority of species in the southwest of Western Australia.
Suits
Large gardens, Small gardens, Containers and window boxes
  • Never feed with a standard fertiliser. Proteaceae have specialised cluster roots and are poisoned by phosphorus at levels most plants need.
  • Water established plants sparingly. Phytophthora root rot is the main killer and it thrives in wet warm soil.
  • Leave the old cones on the plant — they are ornamental, and in several species they release seed only after fire.

What it looks like

Evergreen shrubs and small trees with stiff serrated leaves and dense cylindrical or globular flower spikes in yellow, orange, red or greenish, followed by the woody cones with protruding follicles.

Sources

  • HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
  • Assessment Report on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production — Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (2016) · Systematic review Link

How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.

Guides covering this plant

Tools for planning planting

HoneyHQ saves your cookie choice on this device. Optional analytics run only if you accept — set a preference now, or change it later on the cookies page.