Plants in the genus Grevillea are shrubs, rarely small trees with simple or compound leaves arranged alternately along the branchlets.

[7][8] Knight gave the spelling Grevillia, corrected by Brown in 1810 to Grevillea in Transactions of the Linnean Society of London.

[9] The genus was named in honour of Charles Francis Greville, an 18th-century patron of botany and co-founder of the Royal Horticultural Society.

It has become an environmental weed in other parts of Australia and has been introduced to numerous other countries including New Zealand, French Polynesia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Hawaii and Florida in the United States, where it is regarded as invasive.

30 of those species are listed as Critically Endangered, meaning they face an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild.

[17] The Australian Government Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 lists 45 species and 11 subspecies as being in a threatened category.

[21] Species including G. banksii and the common cultivar Grevillea 'Robyn Gordon' are responsible for allergic contact dermatitis as they contain pentadecylresorcinol (adipostatin A) and tridecylresorcinol, also known as grevillol.

Many grevilleas have a propensity to interbreed freely, and extensive hybridisation and selection of horticulturally desirable attributes has led to the commercial release of many named cultivars.

Among the best known is 'Robyn Gordon', a small shrub up to 1.5 m (5 ft) high and wide which can flower 12 months of the year in subtropical climates.

Flowers are either directly chewed and sucked or entire inflorescences are soaked in water to create a sweet, sugary drink.

The timber from which the veneer was made, referred to as 'beef wood', was sent from Port Jackson by Surgeon-General John White, who arrived in the new penal colony of Australia with the First Fleet.