Under Brown's taxonomic arrangement, "B. menziesii" was placed in subgenus "Banksia verae", the "True Banksias", because its inflorescence is a typical "Banksia" flower spike. "Banksia verae" was renamed "Eubanksia" by Stephan Endlicher in 1847, and demoted to sectional rank by Carl Meissner in his 1856 classification. Meissner further divided "Eubanksia" into four series, with "B. menziesii" placed in series "Salicinae". When George Bentham published his 1870 arrangement in "Flora Australiensis", he discarded Meissner's series, replacing them with four sections. "B. menziesii" was placed in "Orthostylis", a somewhat heterogeneous section containing 18 species. This arrangement would stand for over a century.