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Tennis Ball Banksia

Banksia laevigata

Tennis Ball Banksia
Photo: Cas Liber, Public domain

Tennis Ball Banksia is a shrub native to south-west Western Australia, grown for its large spherical yellow flower heads and grey, flaky bark. It needs full sun, excellent drainage and dry-summer conditions, and dislikes wet, humid roots.

Family
Proteaceae (Protea family)
Grows as
Shrub
Light
Full sun
Water
Water sparingly once established; let the soil dry out between waterings and avoid waterlogging.
Soil
Well-drained, sandy or gritty, low-nutrient soil; tolerates poor soils.
Temperature
10–35 °C; tolerates light frost, protect from hard freezes.
How easy
Moderate
Native range
SW. Western Australia
Climate
subtropical

About

Banksia laevigata, commonly known as the tennis ball banksia, is a species of shrub that is endemic to Western Australia. It has serrated, broadly linear to narrow wedge-shaped leaves, yellow or yellowish green flowers, depending on subspecies, and linear to elliptic follicles with a slightly wrinkled surface.

How to grow it

Seeds do not require any treatment, and take 39 to 92 days to germinate.

Where it grows

Subspecies fuscolutea is more widespread than the autonym and grows in shrubland between Lake Barker, Hyden and Mount Day near Norseman. Subspecies laevigata is found in the Ravensthorpe Range and along the Fitzgerald River where it grows in woodland and shrubland.

Other Banksia plants

Banksia acanthopoda · Prickly Banksia · Banksia acuminata · Wallum Banksia · Banksia alliacea · Cactus Dryandra · Northern Banksia · Yilgarn Dryandra · Banksia archaeocarpa · Banksia arctotidis · Banksia armata var. armata · Banksia armata var. ignicida

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Banksia laevigata by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

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