Melicope haleakalae (Stone's Pelea)

[Melanie]

Range Recorded from Ukuele, on Maui.
Population Last seen in 1919.
Habitat and Ecology A small tree or shrub found in rainforest at 1,220 m.

[Melanie]

Melicope haleakalae
Stone's Pelea Description (Code)
Global Rank: Imperiled (G2)
Endangered Species Act Rank: Species of Concern (SOC)


Species Description
A shrub or small tree, 2-3 m tall. Leaves are in whorls of 4 per node. Flowers are borne in small clusters on the bare stems below the leaves.

Habitat
Wet forests.

Global Range
Endemic to east Maui.

Abundance
Unknown, last collected in 1964. (?)

Global Rank Considerations
Egr not updated with last 2 grank changes. G2 sent by roy kam (12/98).

Global Threats
Threats unknown.

Global Fragility
Fragility unknown.

Current Protection Status
None.

Permanence
Perennial.

Taxonomic Comments
Genus nearly endemic to hawaiian isands, with 2 species in the marquesas islands, species endemic to east maui. Closely related to p. Clusiifolia, differing in larger and persistent sepals and petals.

[Melanie]

synonyms

PECLM Pelea clusiifolia Gray var. minor St. John
PEHA14 Pelea haleakalae B.C. Stone

[Melanie]

Melicope haleakalae. A small tree or shrub last seen in 1919 at Ukuele, on Maui. Habitat and Ecology Was found in. rainforest at 1220 m. Known only from the northwestern flank of Haleakala, Maui. The status of this species is unclear; it may be more common than currently thought. Threats include feral pigs and alien plants.

www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/ key_pub/longshad/a0701e/A0701E10.pdf

[Melanie]

Native Hawaiian name of this species is 'Alani

[anotherspecialist]

www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php/33665/all

[Surroundx]

"4. Possible local rediscoveries, refected in local assessments, that have not yet filtered back to global assessment processes. There are a noticeably large number of taxa (830) for which the RRL assessment is much less threatened than the global IUCN-RL assessment. Of particular interest, four species, namely Adiantum lianxianense, Melicope haleakalae, Chrysophyllum januariense, and Ormosia howii have regional assessments that indicate they are extant and are either Near Threatened or Vulnerable. However, the IUCN-RL has assessed all four species as globally extinct—a diference of unarguable signifcance. Three of those local assessments are noticeably more recent that their IUCN-RL counterparts which suggests they may have been rediscovered in the wild after the IUCN-RL ‘Extinct’ assessments were made. However, for Melicope haleakalae the publication date of NatureServe’s ‘G2’ assessment and IUCN-RL’s ‘Extinct’ assessment is the same: 1998, suggesting a possible taxonomic error. We note that Melicope haleakalae is listed as a ‘Species of Concern’ but not one that is Extinct (Wood et al. 2016), which suggests that the IUCN-RL assessment is perhaps too pessimistic. These sorts of disagreements need urgent re-evaluation to ensure appropriate conservation action is taken."

Source:

Mounce, Ross et al. (2018). Comparing and contrasting threat assessments of plant species at the global and sub‑global level. Biodivers. Conserv. 27: 907-930.

[koeiyabe]

explorer.natureserve.org/Taxon/ELEMENT_GLOBAL.2.137051/Melicope_haleakalae

Last seen in 2001.