Knight, Karina J.   (fl. 1980s - 2020s)

She grew up in Melbourne then Perth, in places with plenty of bush to play in and marvel at. When the family moved to Perth she lived at first in a house nestled between Kings Park and the Swan River - bush on one side, estuary on the other.

Biology was a favourite subject in high school, then later as an undergraduate at Murdoch University. It was at the latter that Karina gradually moved from an interest in animals to an interest in plants.

A lucky break camewhen the Western Australian Herbarium in Perth employed her for a temporary, one-year position to set up a reference herbarium.

At the end of the year she was offered further work, essentially odd-jobbing in the collection and helping with the Herbarium's taxonomic work.

For the next twenty years Karina essentially served a long apprenticeship in all aspects of herbarium management - she mounted botanical specimens, helped keep the collection safe from pests, renamed and re-ordered specimens, and helped the taxonomists create distribution maps and write their papers.

When computers first became available in the mid-1980s she entered the first record in the Western Australian Herbarium's specimens database.

After her 'apprenticeship' in all aspects of the management, Karina was appointed as Collections Manager, a position she retired from in 2019.

In retirement Karina has taken up her own taxonomy project, studying Australian slime moulds as a Research Associate.

Bruce Maslin named the rare species Acacia karina in her honour (in portrait photo).

Source: Extracted from:
https://www.taxonomyaustralia.org.au/post/karina-knight-s-red-boxes
Portrait Photo: 2007 B.Maslin, extracted from R.Underwood, 'A Botanical Journey, The Story of the Western Australian Herbarium' (2011) p.247

Collecting localities for 'Knight, K.J.' from AVH (2025)

Data from 2,541 specimens