Together, yesterday’s and Today’s Endangered All-Stars represent a matched set: a native tree and the moth that feeds on and pollinates it. Blackburn’s Sphinx Moth, the largest native insect in the Hawaiian islands, was thought to be extinct by the 1970s until a population was found on Maui. Subsequently, the moth Read More
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Ugly, but Sweet
March 30, 2010
The Small-Flowered Nothocestrum, today’s Endangered All-Star, has been termed the homeliest of all Hawai’i’s spectacular plants. Noted botanist Joseph Rock called them, “the most ugly trees which the Hawaiian Islands possess.” But the tree bears a tiny, intensely sweet, jasmine-scented flower that sends its fragrance far afield, tempting travelers and an Read More