1. Hawaii is really far away from any other land.
2. Partly because of that, 89% of native Hawaiian plants are endemic (found nowhere else).
3. Hawaii is really, really young. Oahu is only 3-4 million years old. Compared to time-frames of 100 million years when we're talking about development and migration of marsupials, etc.
4. There are some genera (plural of genus) with only one species- monotypic genera, which are also rare and endemic to Hawaii. These are some of the rarest and most interesting plants in the world. This is where I'll start this week's post.
1. Kookia Cookei is a tree with a crazy story. I was thinking of how to write it, but I foudn that Wikipedia did it splendidly.
Kookia Cookei is considered one of the rarest and most endangered plant species in the world. Even when first found in the 1860s, only three trees could be located.[4] It was presumed extinct in the 1950s when the last surviving seedling perished. However, in 1970, a single plant was discovered on the same estate (of a Mr. Cook) where the "last" individual grew, presumably a surviving relict of one of the plants previously cultivated there. Although this tree was destroyed in a fire in 1978, a branch that was removed earlier was grafted onto the related, and also endangered, Kokia kauaiensis. Currently there exist about 23 grafted plants. [The tree cannot survive unless it is grafted into Kokia kauaiensis].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokia_cookei
2. There is a distinction between wild and cultivated cultivars of extremely endangered plant. For example, the Gardenia Brighamii is a common garden plant. Perhaps over 50,000 specimens of it survive in peoples' gardens. The wild variety, however, has only 15 individuals remaining. Scientists want to preserve the wild variety because it 1. Has different kinds of genes and maintains a sort of genetic diversity from the cultivated types, which are mostly bred from one plant and are super genetically similar. 2. Want to preserve the genetic diversity of different island variants, in particular, the Oahu and the Lana'i type. 3. Because human breeding changes the genes in some way, selecting for certain attributes, which the wild ones have not been subject to. This is an important project!
Gardenia Brighamii is one of about 250 plants on the University of Hawaii's Endangered Plant Red List - only fifty or less individuals in the wild.
3. Adaptive Radiation. The Hawaiian Honeycreepers adapted to species of Lobeloids - a certain type of flower - and radiated to many species, much like Darwin's finches. There were about 56 species in total. Over half of them are now extinct. The birds had very important cultural significance. Chiefs would use different colored feathers from different birds to adorn their chiefal staff (an adorned rod of staff which acts as a standard bearer, a symbol of chiefly authority), make cloaks, and other chiefly clothing. Thus each bird had a very great cultural importance related to the identities of chiefs and rulers. When you see old pictures of Hawaiian chiefs, they are invariably with their staffs and their colored feather cloaks. These particular birds, once so important, are now dying out in that same land.
But not only is that true, the lobeloids that the birds feed on actually depend on these bird species. Not only has the birds' beaks changed to only be able to suck nectar from a flower of one particular shape, these beautiful and colorful flowers have also changed to be dependent on one species of bird. What that means is that as the birds are dying out, the flowers are no longer able to be pollinated, and so they die out as well. Double extinction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_honeycreeper_conservation
A Hawaiian lobeloid flower.
The scarlet 'i'iwi is one of the birds that
depend on the flowers, which also depend on the bids
4. Trash is a huge issue. The first picture shows marine trash that washed up on Laysan Island, 930 miles north of Oahu. The beach looks like a garbage dump. The second image is a bird who died from ingesting too much indigestible plastic. Will you think of that. What's worse, Laysan Island is an uninhabited island. What?
Laysan is in what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a monstrous vortex of sea currents where which most of the trash in the Pacific ends up. It is about the size of Texas. This trash - from the U.S., from the main Hawaiian Islands, from Japan and other nations, is swept away by the waves and is gone to us. We forget about it.
It ends up here.
Laysan's a great visual representation of the externalities in our environmental condition, the environmental things that we will forget about unless we ourselves bring them to mind, the effect of an attitude that says the problem's not too bad, that it's all going to be alright in the end.
Just throwing that out there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
http://blogs.reuters.com/adam-pasick/2009/10/23/victims-of-the-pacific-trash-gyre/
Albratross on Laysan Island. It is their breeding ground.
The trash on Laysan island is so upsetting. I can't think about it without wanting to go there and clean it up. Obviously the best way to solve this problem is make sure trash doesn't end up in the ocean (and generate less waste in general), but I've also been following this: http://www.theoceancleanup.com/ Too crazy to actually work? Yeah, probably. But at least they're thinking large-scale.
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