Hawai‘i Island Forest Users

In the early 1900ʻs botanist Joseph Rock found a unique plant in the bellflower family near the summit of Kīlauea Volcano, in present-day Olaʻa Forest Reserve. He described and named it Clermontia peleana subsp. peleana, or the Pele Clermontia, after the volcano goddess Pele. Clermontia is an endemic Hawaiian plant genus with the Hawaiian name ʻoha wai. Clermontia peleana has beautiful blackish-purple curved flowers that coevolved with the long billed honeycreepers. This rare plant has survived as an epiphyte growing on the sides of large trees, escaping the altered ground below. Uncommon even when Rock found it, he predicted its decline and eventual extinction. By the early 2000ʻs it was thought to be extinct in the wild. However, in 2007 it was rediscovered near the Wailuku River thanks to a collaborative multi-agency effort (the Plant Extinction Prevention Program [PEPP], the Hawaiian Silversword Foundation, Volcano Rare Plant Facility, and DOFAW). Since this discovery, thousands of seedlings from Wailuku have been planted in protected areas across Hawai′i island to help save this species from extinction. Over the past year, 2 new populations were found, the first was located in the Upper Waiakea Forest Reserve by the Forest Serviceʻs Forest Inventory and Analysis team. Another was found by PEPP and DOFAW in the Olaʻa Forest Reserve. This brings Pele’s Clermontia across Mauna Loa and back to the origin where it was first described over 100 years ago. These new discoveries may provide conservation managers with additional wild seed sources that could increase genetic diversity to existing reintroduction efforts and re-establishes this rare Hawaiian species back to a significant part of its historical range.