Its distribution in the wild is along the southwest coast of Western Australia, from Denmark to the Stokes National Park, and north to the Stirling Range, growing on white or grey sand in shrubland, heath or open woodland.

Widely considered one of the most attractive Banksia species, B. coccinea is a popular garden plant and one of the most important Banksia species for the cut flower industry; it is grown commercially in several countries including Australia, South Africa, Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Israel.

In cultivation, B. coccinea grows well in a sunny location on well-drained soil, but it cannot survive in areas with humid or wet summers.

The scarlet banksia grows as an erect shrub or small tree, generally around 2–4 m (6.6–13.1 ft) tall, with little lateral spread.

The trunk is generally single at the base before branching, and covered with smooth grey bark that is 2–5 mm (0.08–0.20 in) thick and lacking in lenticels.

[4] Paired in columns, the red styles contrast with the grey-white perianth making a striking flower spike.

[4] The first known specimens of Banksia coccinea were collected in December 1801, during the visit to King George Sound of HMS Investigator under the command of Matthew Flinders.

All three men gathered plant specimens, but those collected by Bauer and Good were incorporated into Brown's herbarium without attribution, so it is not possible to identify the actual collector of this species.

[9][10] The surviving specimen of B. coccinea, held by the Natural History Museum in London, is annotated in Brown's hand "King George IIIds Sound Princess Royal Harbour especially near the observatory".

Meissner divided Brown's Banksia verae, which had been renamed Eubanksia by Stephan Endlicher in 1847,[4] into four series based on leaf properties.

[25] This application of the principle of priority was largely ignored by Kuntze's contemporaries,[26] and Banksia L.f. was formally conserved and Sirmuellera rejected in 1940.

[31] This was reinforced in a 2013 molecular study by Marcel Cardillo and colleagues using chloroplast DNA and combining it with earlier results.

[32] Mast, Eric Jones and Shawn Havery published the results of their cladistic analyses of DNA sequence data for Banksia in 2005.

They inferred a phylogeny greatly different from the accepted taxonomic arrangement, including finding Banksia to be paraphyletic with respect to Dryandra.

[34] No subspecies are recognised, although DNA analysis showed that a population at Redmond was genetically distinctive, while those at Gull Rock, Two Peoples Bay and Cheyne Beach were unusually diverse.

[36] Banksia coccinea occurs close to the south coast of Western Australia, from the Hay River northeast of Denmark Albany in the west, east to Stokes National Park southeast of Munglinup and inland to the Stirling Range and the northern border of Fitzgerald River National Park.

However, numbers of seed are less than other co-occurring species of banksia on the southern plains and peak several years after a fire.

Unusually for banksias, B. coccinea can release seed with resulting seedlings growing in the absence of a bushfire trigger.

[40] Extremely sensitive to dieback caused by Phytophthora cinnamomi,[41] Banksia coccinea is an indicator species for the presence of the disease.

The disease, a form of aerial canker, manifested initially as dead dry brown leaves and the tips of new growth.

Under the outer bark, orange and brown patches of necrosis spread out from leaf nodes until they encircle the stem, which then dies.

In humid spells during warm weather, white or pink spore tendrils are produced on dead wood.

One affected stand monitored over three years from October 1989 to June 1992 showed a 97% mortality of plants (compared with a baseline 40%).

Investigators Bryan Shearer and colleagues isolated another virulent pathogen that they identified as a species of Zythiostroma; however, it appeared to invoke an immune response in the plant.

[47] B. coccinea is a host for the gall midge Dasineura banksiae, a species of fly that attacks and lays eggs on the leaves between late October and early December.

[48] Widely considered one of the most attractive Banksia species, B. coccinea is a popular garden plant and one of the most important Banksia species for the cut flower industry; it is grown commercially in Australia, South Africa, Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Israel, and trialled in France, Spain and South America.

[2] In a breeding program conducted by Margaret Sedgley of the Department of Horticulture, Viticulture and Oenology, Waite Agricultural Research Institute of the University of Adelaide in Adelaide, South Australia, two forms of Banksia coccinea were bred, registered under plant breeders' rights (PBR), and commercially propagated, mainly for the cut flower industry.