Cyrtostylis in Flora Australiensis, as part of his taxonomic arrangement of Banksia, defining it as those taxa with "Leaves flat or undulate, the margins not revolute, toothed pinnatifid or pinnate.

Style arched or nearly straight and turned upwards or curved, but not hooked after flowering, the stigmatic end small, not furrowed.

Cyrtostylis may be summarised as follows:[3] A significant addition to the series occurred in 1988, when George published a new species, B. epica, placing it between B. praemorsa (Cut-leaf Banksia) and B. media.

[5] In 1996, Kevin Thiele and Pauline Ladiges undertook a cladistic analysis of morphological characters of Banksia, which yielded a phylogeny somewhat at odds with George's taxonomic arrangement.

Cyrtostylis occurred singly in locations throughout the cladogram; these were transferred to other series or left incertae sedis.

The remaining eight taxa formed a clade, which further resolved into two subclades:[2] B. pilostylis B. media B. epica B. praemorsa B. benthamiana B. audax B. laevigata subsp.

No formal definition was given for the new circumscription, although Thiele and Ladiges attached no fewer than seven synapomorphies to the clade, three of which were reversals, the other four parallelisms.

[7] Since 1998, Austin Mast has been publishing results of ongoing cladistic analyses of DNA sequence data for the subtribe Banksiinae.

[8][9][10] Early in 2007 Mast and Thiele initiated a rearrangement of Banksia by transferring Dryandra into it, and publishing B. subg.

Mast and Thiele have foreshadowed publishing a full arrangement once DNA sampling of Dryandra is complete.