Hakea or Grevillea — how to tell them apart

A garden visitor asks what a shrub is, and the answer comes back with mild hesitation: probably a grevillea, or it might be a hakea. The two genera have an old habit of looking like one another. Both belong to the family Proteaceae. Both produce the curling, beak-like flowers that bring honeyeaters to the canopy. Both flourish in dry, well-drained soils across most of southern Australia. Their leaves can mimic each other almost exactly, especially the needle-leaved forms.

The reliable way to tell them apart is to look past the flower. The fruit settles it.

The fruit test

This is the single most useful field distinction.

• Hakeas produce woody, persistent fruit capsules that look like small, hard wooden nuts or beaks. They typically remain on the plant for years, opening only after fire or stress. Crack one off a stem — it should feel like a knot of timber, with a clear seam where the two valves meet. Inside are two winged seeds.
• Grevilleas produce papery or leathery seedpods, much smaller and softer. The pods are not persistent in the same way; they ripen, split open, drop their seeds, and fall from the plant within a season. Hold one between thumb and forefinger and it feels closer to thin card than to wood.

If a shrub has obvious woody nuts clinging to old branches, it is almost certainly a hakea. If the seed structures are inconspicuous and easily missed, it is almost certainly a grevillea.

Flower shape — useful but not definitive

The flowers can suggest a genus, but neither is exclusive.

Grevilleas show the widest range:

• Toothbrush form — densely packed flowers along one side of an arched spike, like the bristles of a brush. Common in Grevillea hilliana, G. robusta, and many cultivated hybrids.
• Spider form — small clusters of flowers with long, curving styles radiating outward. G. juniperina, G. rosmarinifolia.
• Cylindrical form — dense, upright spikes. G. banksii, G. petrophiloides.

Hakeas lean toward simpler clusters — small flowers gathered tightly along the stem or in compact balls, with the styles less ornamental than in the showy grevilleas. Hakea laurina (pin-cushion hakea) is the famous exception: round red flower balls with white styles fired through them like pins, which looks almost like a banksia at a glance.

If a shrub has the elaborate, ornamental flower of a hybrid cultivar — the kind sold under names like ‘Robyn Gordon’ or ‘Moonlight’ — it is overwhelmingly likely to be a grevillea. The grevilleas have been the workhorses of native-plant hybridisation in Australia.

Leaves can mislead

Both genera include species with:

• needle-like leaves (Hakea sericea, Grevillea juniperina),
• broad lance-shaped leaves (Hakea salicifolia, Grevillea robusta),
• divided, fern-like leaves (Hakea drupacea, Grevillea pteridifolia).

The leaf alone is rarely diagnostic. Combined with a glance at the fruit, however, the picture clears immediately.

Common species to recognise

Hakeas you will likely meet

• Hakea laurina — pin-cushion hakea. Round red flower balls with protruding white styles. WA native, widely cultivated.
• Hakea petiolaris — sea-urchin hakea. Pale pink-cream flower balls on bare stems, leathery leaves.
• Hakea salicifolia — willow-leaved hakea. Broad lance leaves, small white flower clusters. Hardy hedge plant.
• Hakea sericea — silky hakea. Needle leaves, white flowers, persistent woody fruit.

Grevilleas you will likely meet

• Grevillea robusta — silky oak. The tallest of the grevilleas, reaching 30 metres. Fern-like leaves, golden-orange toothbrush flowers in spring. Common street tree across eastern Australia.
• Grevillea banksii — red silky oak. Smaller, with red or cream cylindrical flower spikes. A parent of many cultivars.
• Grevillea juniperina — prickly spider flower. Spider flowers in red, yellow, or orange. Low spreading habit.
• Grevillea rosmarinifolia — rosemary grevillea. Needle leaves, red spider flowers. One of the most widely planted in cool-climate gardens.

Why they are often confused

The two genera have been hybridised within themselves but not, as a rule, between each other — the woody fruit habit doesn’t cross with the papery habit. They occupy the same garden niches, sometimes the same nursery shelves, and share a common pollinator strategy in their flowers, which is why bird life treats them as functional equivalents even when a botanist would not.

For a gardener, the practical takeaway is simple. Look at the older wood. If it is studded with woody fruit capsules that have weathered grey, it is a hakea. If it carries only the fading remnants of soft seedpods, it is a grevillea.

The plates in Banksia Folio Volume I draw on Proteaceae across the family, including studies that place a banksia, a hakea, and a grevillea on facing pages — close enough for the structural distinctions to read at a glance.