It is a woody shrub to 4 m (13 ft) high with large, broad serrate leaves and thick finely-furred stems.

B. solandri was first collected by William Baxter from the vicinity of King George Sound, and published by Robert Brown in his 1830 Supplementum primum Prodromi florae Novae Hollandiae.

[1] The name honors Daniel Solander, a student of Carl Linnaeus who accompanied Joseph Banks on the first voyage of James Cook, who collected the first specimens of Banksia to be scientifically described.

The following year Drummond published the name "Banksia hookeri" for the species: [A]bout the height of 2,000 feet I found, first making its appearance, a splendid Banksia, with leaves more than nine inches long, and about five wide, irregularly jagged and sinuated like those of an English oak.

major, but that variety is no longer maintained, and B. hookeri is now considered a synonym of B. solandri.