Banksia spinulosa var. spinulosa is a shrub that grows along the east coast of Australia, in Queensland and New South Wales. Description As with the other varieties of B. spinulosa (Hairpin Banksia), B. spinulosa var. spinulosa grows as a multi-stemmed lignotuberous shrub with flower spikes that are all golden or golden with red or purple styles. Its strongly revolute leaf margins distinguish it from the other varieties, and it is further distinguished from B. spinulosa var. collina in having narrower leaves that are serrate only towards the leaf tips. It is also easily distinguished from B. spinulosa var. cunninghamii by its lignotuber and resultant multi-stemmed habit. Taxonomy B. spinulosa var. spinulosa is an autonym that encompasses the type material of the species. This material was collected by John White, probably in 1792. The following year, the species was formally described by Smith in his A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland, and given the specific epithet "spinulosa", a Latin term meaning having minute spines, probably in reference to the leaf tips. Before 1810, no taxon had been circumscribed as equivalent to today's B. spinulosa var. spinulosa. That year saw the publication of Banksia collina (now B. spinulosa var. collina), and from then until 1981, the circumscription of B. spinulosa was roughly equivalent to the present-day circumscription of B. spinulosa var. spinulosa. In the first infrageneric arrangement of Banksia, that of Brown in 1830, B. spinulosa was placed in subgenus Banksia verae, the "True Banksias", because its inflorescence is a typical Banksia flower spike. It was placed next to B. cunninghamii and B. collina, both now considered varieties of B. spinulosa; these three were placed between B. ericifolia (Heath-leaved Banksia) and B. occidentalis (Red Swamp Banksia). Banksia verae was renamed Eubanksia by Stephan Endlicher in 1847. Carl Meissner demoted Eubanksia to sectional rank in his 1856 classification, and divided it into four series, with B. spinulosa placed in series Abietinae, while B. cunninghamii and B. collina were placed alongside each other in series Salicinae. When George Bentham published his 1870 arrangement in Flora Australiensis, he discarded Meissner's series, placing all the species with hooked styles together in a section that he named Oncostylis. This arrangement would stand for over a century. Alex George published a new taxonomic arrangement of Banksia in his landmark 1981 monograph The genus Banksia L.f. (Proteaceae). Endlicher's Eubanksia became B. subg. Banksia, and was divided into