spinulosa is a shrub that grows along the east coast of Australia, in Queensland and New South Wales.

[3] The following year, the species was formally described by Smith in his A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland, and given the specific epithet "spinulosa", a Latin term meaning having minute spines, probably in reference to the leaf tips.

[5] When George Bentham published his 1870 arrangement in Flora Australiensis, he discarded Meissner's series, placing all the species with hooked styles together in a section that he named Oncostylis.

spinulosa's taxonomic placement may be summarised as follows:[2] 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 merging Dryandra into it, and publishing B. subg.

[11] The variety has two taxonomic synonyms: Banksia incognita, published anonymously in The Naturalists' Pocket Magazine in 1798,[12] and Banksia denticulata, published by Georges Louis Marie Dumont de Courset in 1814.

[13] This variety occurs in a series of disjunct populations along the east coast of Australia.

It is most common in New South Wales where it occurs from the border with Victoria north to Newcastle.

It is typically an understory shrub in open forests and woodlands of Eucalyptus.

[1][14] This variety is a popular garden plant, and is grown under a wide range of conditions in eastern Australia.

Its behaviour is difficult to predict, as it varies greatly with provenance and growing conditions.