Banksia occidentalis

Modern common name Red swamp banksia or waterbush

Modern binomial name Banksia occidentalis

First described Robert Brown

Distribution WA 

From Flore des Serres et des Jardins de l’Europe

Flore des Serres et des Jardins de l’Europe (‘Flowers of the Greenhouses and Gardens of Europe’) (1845–1888) was one of the finest horticulture journals produced in Europe during the 19th century. Founded by Louis van Houtte and edited together with Charles Antoine Lemaire and Michael Joseph François Scheidweiler, it illsutrated and described many botanical curiosities from around the world. The work is remarkable for the level of colour-printing craftmanship displayed by the Belgian lithographers Severeyns, Stroobant, and De Pannemaker. Louis-Constantin Stroobant (1814-1872), printed many of the illustrations .

Many of the plants depicted in Flore des Serres were also available for sale in van Houtte’s nursery. The editors were experienced botanical engravers and horticulturists, combining their knowledge and skills to create a showpiece of novel exotics and familiar cultivated plants. Lemaire came from being an engraver for Redoute’s great works Les Liliaces and Les Roses. van Houtte, owner of the most successful nursery on the Continent at that time, sent his own plant explorers to find unknown orchids and other exotics, and to return them to Ghent for cultivation at his nursery, and then illsutrated them in Flore des Serres.