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 resprouter; 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.