It has shiny green, deeply serrated leaves with triangular lobes and spikes of golden yellow flowers on short side branches.

[2][3][4][5] Banksia candolleana was first formally described in 1855 by the Swiss botanist Carl Meissner in William Jackson Hooker's Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany from specimens collected by James Drummond.

[8] This application of the principle of priority was largely ignored by Kuntze's contemporaries,[9] and Banksia L.f. was formally conserved and Sirmuellera rejected in 1940.

[10] Propellor banksia is found from Arrowsmith south to Gingin on sandplains north of Perth where it usually grows in low kwongan and the annual rainfall is 600–700 mm (24–28 in).

[11] The white-tailed dunnart (Sminthopsis granulipes) has been recorded visiting flowerheads, though whether it is an effective pollinator is unknown.