Clermontia kakeana is still a fairly common lobeliad. Except on O’ahu; it is  not easy to see  on pretty much any trail here. Tantalus has a fairly healthy population of it. I’d like to think we at the Manoa Cliff restoration have done our darnedest to keep it that way.

There were a couple plants that died a few years back that I wish I got more fruit from. Every time I checked before, they never had any fruit. It was disappointing that the last time I checked they were just skeletons for plants.

While we do have some representation from those plants, I had always hoped to have more. And it turns out, tucked in the back of our colleague’s refrigerator was a little bag of seeds collected from those very plants. From 2010 though. I was skeptical that those 5 year old seeds would germinate, but imagine my surprise when I saw this. There’s “plants vs. zombies” and then there’s zombie plant. Score 1 (more like a few hundred) for team lobeliad!