 The species is in fact not restricted to hilly terrain, so the specific epithet is misleading.Brown apparently neglected to collect a specimen for the taxon, so a specimen collected by George Caley at Newcastle has since been declared a neotype.It retained its specific rank in Brown's 1830 arrangement of "Banksia", being placed in subgenus "Banksia verae", the "True Banksias", because its inflorescence is a typical Banksia flower spike.