 Like many plants in south @-@ west Western Australia , B. prionotes is adapted to an environment in which bushfire events are relatively frequent . Most Banksia species can be placed in one of two broad groups according to their response to fire : reseeders are killed by fire , but fire also triggers the release of their canopy seed bank , thus promoting recruitment of the next generation ; resprouters survive fire , resprouting from a lignotuber or , more rarely , epicormic buds protected by thick bark . B. prionotes is unusual in that it does not fit neatly into either of these groups . It lacks a lignotuber or thick bark , and so cannot be considered a <unk> ; yet it may survive or escape some fires because of its height , the sparseness of its foliage , and because it occurs in dune swales where fire are cooler and patchier . On the other hand , it is not a typical reseeder either , because of its relatively low fire mortality rates , and because it is only weakly serotinous : although fire promotes seed release , seed release still occurs in the absence of fire . 
