Wollemia nobilis first hit the headlines in 1994 when David Noble found the grove of them northwest of Sydney, the exact location still secret. Tregothnan had been busy adding to its collection of rarities for and immediately set about adding this Araucariaceae family star as soon as possible. During the late nineties an exciting rush of new material came to Tregothnan from the International Conifer Conservation Programme and it was hoped that this highly respected route would transcend the bureaucracy and allow in the first ‘Pinosaur’, as it was now called. This was not to be. The Australians mounted the finest example of commercial conservation the world had yet seen. The setting up of the Wollemi Pine conservation club and the Wollemi Pine website communicated the benefits of sensitive commercial propagation of the trees and a coordinated release across the world. Tregothnan was conducting a tea tasting at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in October 2005 with its own botanical first, tea actually grown in the UK. This had attracted huge international interest with crews from USA and Japan keen to see The Honourable Evelyn Boscawen about his tea and other plants his family had pioneered at Tregothnan since 1335. But what really caught Mr Boscawen’s eye were the posters advertising the forthcoming auction of the Wollemia.