little incentive for adaptation to the species. There is also no evidence of granivores feeding on seed after it has fallen. As a result, this species has the highest rate of seed viability recorded for a Banksia species: in one study, 74% of all seed produced in the previous 12 years was viable. This was largely accounted for by seed under 9 years old, about 90% of which is viable. After the ninth year, viability is lost rapidly as the follicles decay and senescence sets in. Seed production itself starts very slowly. On average, plants aged between 5 and 12 years have about 18 seeds stored in their canopy. Storage increases exponentially, however, and 25-year-old plants often have tens of thousands of seeds. Seed production probably never plateaus. In fact, by the time a plant is twenty years old it has accumulated such a great weight of cones that major branches begin to break away; and by the age of thirty, plants have broken branches more often than not. As plants age, branch breakage increasingly leads to plant death, and it is unlikely that any plants live to more than 45 years. The high seed maturation and viability rates are offset, however, by an extremely low seedling survival rate. This is almost solely due to moisture stress. In one study, an estimated 17,100 viable seeds were released following an experimental fire. Fewer than 5% of them germinated, and only eleven plants survived the first summer drought. The last plants to die were in depressions, in shaded areas or amongst leaf litter; and the eleven survivors were all on road shoulders, where they benefited from road runoff and a thick mulch of pisolitic laterite. The inevitable conclusion is that seedling survival is primarily determined by water availability. Conservation Banksia cuneata was declared critically endangered after a 1982 survey found only five populations comprising about 450 plants. The largest population, consisting of around 300 plants, was on a conservation reserve, but all others were on road verges, and contained only 50–70 plants each. However, since then more plants have been located, and populations have been found to be gradually increasing in response to a number of conservation measures including fencing and baiting of rabbits. In recognition of its slight recovery, it is now considered endangered but no longer critically so. In April 1987, Western Australia's Department of Environment and Conservation burnt part