Native to the east coast of Australia, it is found from Queensland to Victoria with outlying populations on Tasmania and Flinders Island.

This Banksia species has wrinkled grey bark, shiny dark green serrated leaves and large yellow or greyish-yellow flower spikes appearing over summer.

The cotyledons are linear to lance-shaped with the narrow end towards the base, 3.5–10 cm (1.4–3.9 in) long with serrated margins and a v-shaped sinus at the tip.

[4] Banksia serrata closely resembles B. aemula, but the latter can be distinguished by an orange-brown, rather than greyish, trunk, and adult leaves narrower than 2 cm (0.8 in).

The inflorescences of B. serrata are generally a duller grey-yellow in colour, have longer (2–3 mm), more fusiform or cylindrical pollen presenters on the tips of unopened flowers and the follicles are smaller.

[6][7][8] Banksia serrata was first collected at Botany Bay on 29 April 1770, by Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, naturalists on the British vessel HMS Endeavour during Lieutenant (later Captain) James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific Ocean.

[9][10] Solander coined the (unpublished) binomial name Leucadendrum serratifolium, with Leucadendron serratum also appearing under the finished drawing in Banks' Florilegium.

[8] The Cadigal people who lived in the Sydney region prior to the arrival of Europeans, called the plant wiriyagan.

[2] German botanist Joseph Gaertner described Banksia conchifera in 1788 in the first volume of his work De Fructibus et Seminibus Plantarum.

Banksia verae was renamed Eubanksia by Stephan Endlicher in 1847, and demoted to sectional rank by Carl Meissner in his 1856 classification.

[15] When George Bentham published his 1870 arrangement in Flora Australiensis, he discarded Meissner's series, replacing them with four sections.

Banksia along with B. aemula as its sister taxon (united by their unusual seedling leaves) and B. ornata as its next closest relative.

[21] In 2002, a molecular study by Austin Mast again showed that the three eastern species formed a natural group, or clade, but they were only distantly related to other members of the series Banksia.

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

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

[25] Banksia serrata is a fairly uniform species, showing little variation between different habitats other than occasionally occurring as a shrub in coastal areas.

[4] Banksia serrata occurs on the Australian mainland from Wilsons Promontory, Victoria (39°08′ S) in the south, to Maryborough, Queensland (25°31′ S) in the north.

There is also a large population at Sisters Creek in Tasmania and another in the southwest corner of the Wingaroo Nature Reserve in the northern part of Flinders Island.

The Wingaroo NR Conservation Plan (2000) reports that the population comprises around 60 to 80 individual trees, the majority of which are believed to be "quite old".

[29] In the Upper Myall River region, B. serrata grows in dry sclerophyll forest on sandy soils that have recently formed (in the Holocene) or in shallow soils over differing substrates, while its close relative B. aemula grows in dry heath forest that occurs on ancient Pleistocene sands not disturbed in 125,000 years.

[30] B. serrata is a component of the Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub (ESBS), designated an endangered ecological community.

[32] A 1988 field study found that most flowers of B. serrata opened at night, and recorded the brown antechinus (Antechinus stuartii), sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps), eastern pygmy possum (Cercartetus nanus), and bush rat (Rattus fuscipes) as nocturnal mammalian visitors and pollinators.

[39] As with other species in the genus, B. serrata trees are naturally adapted to the presence of regular bushfires and exhibit a form of serotiny known as pyriscence.

[41] Repeated intervals of five years' duration or less will result in decline of population as young plants are not yet resistant to fire, and their tall habit makes them especially vulnerable.

[43] The gnarled lumpy bark, saw-toothed leaves and silvery-yellow spikes in bud are horticultural features of B. serrata.

[45] In cultivation, though relatively resistant to P. cinnamomi dieback, it grows best in a well-drained soil, preferably fairly sandy with a pH from 5.5 to 7.5, and a sunny aspect.