In the accompanying text, John Lindley identified the plant as B. speciosa (Showy Banksia), but commented "We found neither the whiteness of the under side of the leaves, nor the faintness of the veins, which are supposed to be characteristic of the species".

[3] Doubts were raised about the identity of the species in 1857, when Walter Hood Fitch painted B. victoriae based on a cut flower provided by David Moore of Glasnevin Botanical Garden.

Fitch's painting appeared as Plate 4906 in Volume 82 of Curtis's Botanical Magazine, and was accompanied by the text: "There can, I think, be no doubt of its being the same with the B. speciosa above quoted in the Bot.

"[4] Thus it was implied that 1835 plate was in fact B. victoriae, a suggestion that was supported by George Bentham in his treatment of the species in his 1870 Flora Australiensis.

In 1855 Carl Meissner published a formal description of the species in Hooker's Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany, referring to it as "a noble species, very near B. speciosa, but easily distinguished by the segments of the leaves being larger, flat, not white underneath, nor scrobiculate above, etc.".

[8] Although Meissner did not proffer an infrageneric placement for B. victoriae in his 1855 publication of the species, he did so the following year in his chapter on the Proteaceae for A. P. de Candolle's Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis.

[10] This application of the principle of priority was largely ignored by Kuntze's contemporaries,[11] and Banksia L.f. was formally conserved and Sirmuellera rejected in 1940.

[12] Bentham's arrangement stood for over a century, before being superseded by Alex George's revision, published in his 1981 monograph The genus Banksia L.f. (Proteaceae).

[1] This placement was rejected by Kevin Thiele and Pauline Ladiges in 1996; their arrangement, which was based on a cladistic analysis of morphological features, discarded Crocinae altogether, instead placing B. victoriae in series Banksia, subseries Cratistylis, alongside B. burdettii (Burdett's Banksia).

Overall, the inferred phylogeny is very greatly different from George's arrangement, and provides compelling evidence for the paraphyly of Banksia with respect to Dryandra.

[17] B. victoriae occurs only within a fairly small areas between Northampton and the lower reaches of the Murchison River.

However, it is not currently considered endangered, partly because a significant proportion of the population occur within the Kalbarri National Park;[19] it has not been given a rating under Western Australia's Department of Environment and Conservation's Declared Rare and Priority Flora List.

[18] With attractive, deep-green foliage and large, brightly coloured flowers that are held outside the canopy, B. victoriae is a popular garden plant.