Kahoolawe needs
40,000 native
Hawaiian plants

The reserve commission
asks the public to help find
seeds and cuttings

By Pat Omandam
Star-Bulletin

The Kahoolawe Island Reserve Commission is seeking help from people, businesses and groups to obtain 40,000 native Hawaiian plants to be used to replant a cleared, barren area near the top of the former "target island."

Paul Higashino, commission restoration ecologist, said the commission needs seeds or cuttings from seven native plants.

They are the a'ali'i (Dodonaea viscosa), 'aweoweo (Chenopodium oahuensis), pa'u o Hi'iaka (Jacquemontia ovalifolia), koai'a (Acaci koaia), lama (Diospyros sandwicensis), 'ohia (Metrosideros polymorpha) and mamane (Sophora chrysophylla).

Ideally, Higashino said, these plants should come from dry-land habitats on Maui, Lanai and Molokai to better ensure their chances for survival.

"The plants have to be grown under specified conditions, so they don't contaminate Kahoolawe with nematodes, ants and other alien hitchhikers," he said.

The plants need to be at least eight inches tall when delivered. Those received in the upcoming months will be planted along the upper slopes of Lua Makika, the crater at the island's highest elevation. That area was cleared of unexploded ordnance in 1995 during a short-term model cleanup.

Anyone interested in bidding on all or part of the plant request should call the commission at 586-0761.

This is the first of what is expected to be several public requests for plants.

Higashino said much of the top third of Kahoolawe's 45 square miles is red "hardpan," a cement-like layer of earth that ordinarily rests below topsoil.

The island began losing its topsoil in the mid-1800's due to overgrazing of sheep and cattle.

With the loss of plant ground cover, wind and rains have washed millions of tons of topsoil into the ocean, he said.

The state Legislature in 1993 created the commission to manage the island.

It is responsible for guiding the Navy's cleanup of unexploded ordnance, as well as the restoration and future use of Kahoolawe.

The long-term plan is to make the island a native Hawaiian cultural and educational center.

Rare seeds from Kauai
reserve offered to public

By Trish Moore
Star-Bulletin

LIHUE - Keith Robinson's endangered species reserve in Makaweli on Kauai produced a bountiful harvest of rare seeds this year, and he's offering them free to the public.

The volume of seeds harvested from Robinson's Solanum sandichensis and Delissea rhytidosperma plants was "unprecedented this year," he said.

The species of Solanum, an Oahu native, is extinct in the wild and is only grown in botanical gardens and reserves. The plant looks like a scraggly eggplant that produces tomato-shaped fruits the color of eggplant. Robinson has between 8,000 and 20,000 seeds to give away.

The Delissea, a slender relative of the Lobelius family, reaches up to 10 feet and is endemic to all the islands. Only 19 plants are still known to exist in the wild. Robinson's harvest of approximately 50 small purple berries contains between a quarter to a half million seeds, he says.

About 211 seeds from Kauai native Kokio kauaiensis are available. Only a few dozen of these plants survive in the wild.

Robinson, whose family owns the island of Niihau and thousands of acres on Kauai, has nurtured about 80 species of endangered plants on his 100-acre reserve since 1986.

Until recently, state law prohibited individuals from possessing and distributing endangered plant species. Robinson has always defied those laws and quietly distributed seeds produced on his reserve. However, since the rules have changed, Robinson says he's making the seeds available publicly "as a Christmas gift to the people of Hawaii."

The seeds will be distributed in December through the Honolulu Board of Water Supply.