The trouble in Hawaii is that we are losing Hawaii. Of the 1,000 original plant species found nowhere else, 201 are listed as threatened or endangered, and an additional 170 probably should be.
To find out more, click on http://www.discovery.com to search out the "The Nature Tuesday" section of Discovery World on the Discovery Channel Online.
The story: "Hawaiian Punch, native flora takes a beating in the Sandwich Isles" explains how man, particularly those arriving after Captain Cook, hastened the demise of many plants.
All this is brought home with Discovery Channel's Internet site.
The information was prepared by Adele Conover, with help from the local plant specialists.
The site also includes a series of links, one of which is for the Hawaiian Natural History Program at http://www.abi.org/nhp/us/hi/.
The WWW site, a nonprofit affiliate of the Nature Conservancy of Hawai'i, compiles and maintains detailed, comprehensive information on Hawaii's rarest biological resources.
The Discovery Channel site is one of the great black holes of the Internet that just keeps going and going, so once you finish reading about Hawaii, be prepared to lose yourself for the rest of the evening.