Brighamia insignis

[alex]

Hi !

Brighamia insignis, the native names are alula, haha, olulu, pu aupaka, was once common on the hawaiian islands of Ni'ihau and Kaua'i.

image of one of my plants:



Now it can be found on Kaua'i only, just a hand full specimens are known.

The plant has gone from most of its former home, because goats have overgrazed the habitat. Another effect is the extinction of the only pollinator, a moth.

image of one of the flowers, they exhale a bad scent, almost potato-like but attractive for moths:



Brighamia insignis can be bought now in many nurseries all over the world, because a program to save this species among others has been started some years ago.

It is an amazingly easy to grow plant, that can be kept in the window-sill and may be kept under full light and outside in the Summer.

[Melanie]

The 'Olulu (Brighamia insignis) found only on island of Kauai and
historically also on island of Niihau. Two subpopulations have been
recorded, with a total of seven mature individuals.
Habitat and Ecology A succulent unbranched shrub of sea cliffs and
coastal bluffs.
Threats Major threats to surviving individuals include goats,
introduced plants, landslides, fire, human impacts, invertebrates and
loss of pollinators. Widely distributed in botanical gardens
throughout the world.

Here is a great website about this species

www.hawaiianpalm.nl/

[Melanie]

Cliffside plant nearly extinct, but zoo aids pollination process

By James Steinberg
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

September 26, 2002

Employing a paint brush and a petri dish, a San Diego Zoo gardener
filled in yesterday for a long-extinct natural pollinator in an effort
to help a plant that could face extinction itself.

The plant, Brighamia insignis, commonly called alula, is limited to
several steep volcanic sea cliffs in Hawaii. It survives in the wild
only because botanists rappel down the rocks on ropes and do for the
plants what nature is unable to do.

The zoo maintains 35 specimens of alula in an off-exhibit area. One,
watched expectantly for more than two weeks, finally had four flowers
open yesterday and was ready for pollination.

"It's sort of our version of artificially inseminating the giant
panda," zoo arborist Dan Simpson noted. To set the mood yesterday, he
placed a plate of chocolates and a small bottle of Grand Passion
Liqueur next to the blooming plant while lead gardener Michael
Letzring, brush in hand, studied the small, yellow flowers under a
magnifier.

"Zoo people have their own sense of humor," Simpson said.

Letzring readily admitted to being nervous about what he was about to
do. Hand-pollinating alula was both a first for him and the zoo. It
also is believed to be the first time alula has been hand-pollinated
outside Hawaii.

"The hardest part for me will be to keep my hands from shaking,"
Letzring said. He carefully touched a brush, its tip trimmed straight,
to the first alula flower. The bristles turned pale yellow with
pollen.

The plant was originally pollinated either by a bird, bee or other
insect, but whatever it was, is gone, he said.

Letzring was prepared for yesterday's procedure by botanists at the
Honolulu Botanical Gardens and the National Tropical Botanical Garden,
also in Hawaii, where the plant is propagated artificially.

The next step was to transfer the pollen, collected from the stamen,
or male part of a bloom, to the pistil, with its ovary, of an
adjoining flower. As a precaution, Simpson held a petri dish
underneath each flower to catch any pollen that fell.

Very little is actually known about alula, Simpson said. "They say the
pollen will keep a 'reasonable' amount of time, but what's
'reasonable' ?"

If yesterday's pollination is successful, the zoo will harvest seeds
in 48 days. The seeds keep for up to three years. In the meantime, the
plan is to pollinate every other day for about two weeks as the plants
flower.

The San Diego Zoo has more than 6,000 plant species, Simpson noted.
About 185 individual plants, including the 35 alula, are classified as
rare, endangered or extinct in the wild and are deemed "conservation
worthy."

"We're a living repository," Simpson said. Plants follow animals onto
the endangered list, he said, and "if they put in a shopping mall or a
condo complex, there's not a place for them to return to."

While green and leafy on top, alula is actually a succulent, Letzring
said. "People think of Hawaii as lush and tropical, but (the plants)
exist in the wild with a lot of wind and where the water drains
quickly."

The zoo keeps its alula, the biggest of which is about 18 inches tall,
in plastic containers set in chipped volcanic rock to simulate the
natural environment. In the wild, the plants can reach 6 feet.

There are no immediate plans to put the zoo's alula plants on public
display, Simpson said. The priority is to grow more of the plants, and
when the zoo has enough of them, to send additional plants to other
botanical gardens.

What about the chocolates and Passion Flower Liqueur? "They're going
back in the closet," Simpson said.

[bowheadwhale]

Uh... Alex... I cannot see the pictures. Only white squares with a red cross in...

[Melanie]

Here are other pictures of this plant

www.ntbg.org/plants/plant_details.php?rid=122&plantid=1923

[alex]

bowheadwhale said:

Uh... Alex... I cannot see the pictures. Only white squares with a red cross in...

Sorry, they were posted in another forum too, and I have deleted all of those pictures.

I could only found the first two of them, the last one is lost completely, anyway, my two plants themselfes are also dead now.

[bowheadwhale]

Sorry, they were posted in another forum too, and I have deleted all of those pictures.

I could only found the first two of them, the last one is lost completely, anyway, my two plants themselfes are also dead now.[/quote]

I hope you dried the specimens to keep them as souvenirs?

[Melanie]

Down to the last plant: The painstaking work of extinction prevention

KAUAI, Hawaii—When botanist Steven Perlman first started working with the Brighamia insignis, a critically endangered Hawaiian flower species, there were still several hundred of them left in the wild.

“Right now we think there’s one plant left,” said Perlman, who now works in the Plant Extinction Prevention Program, or PEPP, at Kauai’s National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG).

Perlman can often be found rappelling down cliffs, hiking deep in forests, or roping across waterfalls searching for the most endangered native plants in Hawaii.

Some species, like Brighamia insignis, are only found on steep cliffs because those are the places that invasive predators can’t reach.

“We’ve helicoptered around Kauai, looked with binoculars, went up and down the cliffs in ropes looking, but there’s just one plant left.”

“We’ve helicoptered around Kauai, looked with binoculars, went up and down the cliffs in ropes looking, but there’s just one plant left,” Perlman said.

“They’re really spectacular,” Perlman said of the long, tubular flowers.

Their main pollinator, the green sphinx moth, is so rarely seen now that PEPP had to hike deep into the forest and climb cliffs to hand pollinate the flowers.

“I’d go and pollinate them on cliffs in areas where it was 1,000 feet down to the sea,” Perlman said.

By cross-pollinating the plants, PEPP was able to retrieve seeds and grow more of the plants. But just when progress was being made, two strong hurricanes in 1982 and 1992 blew most of the remaining Brighamia insignis flowers off the cliff.

Invasive weeds grew back in their place, while goats and insects ate many of the remaining plants and their seeds. The species is now nearly extinct in the wild.

Luckily for the Brighamia insignis, it’s unique flowers caught the attention of gardeners and botanical gardens all over the world, so there are tens of thousands being grown in captivity, Perlman said.

Sadly, the same is not true for most of Hawaii’s endangered native plants.

fusion.net/story/308108/saving-endangered-plants-in-hawaii/

[Melanie]

Plantae Tracheophyta Magnoliopsida Campanulales Campanulaceae

Scientific Name: Brighamia insignis
Species Authority: A.Gray
Common Name(s):
English – Cabbage On A Stick, 'olulu
Assessment Information [top]
Red List Category & Criteria: Critically Endangered D ver 3.1
Year Published: 2003
Date Assessed: 2003-04-30
Annotations:
Needs updating
Assessor(s): Bruegmann, M.M. & Caraway, V.
Reviewer(s): Maunder, M. (Plant Conservation Committee) & Dickinson, T. (Red List Programme Office)
Justification:
found only on island of Kauai and historically also on island of Niihau. The total population consists of only seven mature individuals.
Geographic Range [top]
Range Description: Found only on island of Kauai and historically also on island of Niihau. Two subpopulations have been recorded, with a total of seven mature individuals.
Countries occurrence:
Native:
United States (Hawaiian Is.)
Range Map: Click here to open the map viewer and explore range.
Habitat and Ecology [top]
Habitat and Ecology: A succulent unbranched shrub of sea cliffs and coastal bluffs.
Systems: Terrestrial
Threats [top]
Major Threat(s): Major threats to surviving individuals include goats, introduced plants, landslides, fire, human impacts, invertebrates and loss of pollinators. Widely distributed in botanical gardens throughout the world.

www.iucnredlist.org/details/44080/0

[Surroundx]

It's natural pollinator appears to have gone extinct, and thus the single wild individual cannot be said to constitute a self-sustaning population. I'd suggest moving to the Extinct the Wild board:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighamia_insignis

[Surroundx]

Walsh, Seana K. et al. (In Press, 2019). Pollination biology reveals challenges to restoring populations of Brighamia insignis (Campanulaceae), a critically endangered plant species from Hawai‘i. Flora. doi: doi.org/10.1016/j.flora.2019.151448