Q+A with Robert Kooyman
WILD: You discovered the Nightcap oak. Can you tell us a little about how that came about? And how did it evade ‘discovery’ for so long?
RK: In 1988 I picked some leaves from a small sapling that looked like Macadamia in an area where Macadamia is definitely isn’t present. Intrigued, I sent the leaf specimen to botanist Alex Floyd who wasn’t able—with the limited material—to allocate it to a genus.
In 2000 I again found a sapling but this time with adults nearby and with old mature fruits still on the ground. The fleshy drupes had a woody nut inside that when eaten into by bush rats looked familiar. I had seen something very similar in the Wet Tropics of Far North Queensland, so I collected material and went home to peruse the botanical literature. I then photographed and scanned what I had collected and sent the images to Peter Weston at the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney. The rest, as they say, is history.
Like many species in Proteaceae, the juvenile
