As an extension of the presentation by Chipper Wichman, President and CEO of the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) at our December 2015 meeting, the Laguna Beach Garden Club will donate $1000 to assist in preventing the extinction of one of the rarest trees in Hawaii – Polyscias bisattentuata (formerly known as Tetraplasandra bisattentuata– an endemic genus to Hawaii).
For decades it was known that only four (4) trees on Kahili Mountain existed, but recently one of the field botanists from NTBG discovered thirty (30+) trees growing on a different mountain, and as an added bonus they discovered a new type of Lobelia in the process. The project of the NTBG, known as “On the Brink” [as in extinction], uses helicopters to reach a rugged location to collect seeds of the newly discovered trees. Seed collection from as many individual new trees is necessary to prevent what is called genetic bottle necking, a term used to describe a decline in the ability of a species to successfully reproduce itself due to limited genetic variation in its gene pool. The use of helicopters, at $1000 per hour, is essential due to the rugged terrain.
The Laguna Beach Garden Club’s donation will cover part of the cost of flying a team up to bag immature fruit (so the rats do not get it) and then come back several weeks later to collect the fruit when it matures. Laguna Beach Garden Club is proud to make a difference in this effort to save rare flora in our 50th state on the Garden Isle of Kauai.
