Work and weather have kept me away from the mountains lately. Hopefully it will change soon. In the meantime, here are some shots I took a while back of the rare Cyanea crispa in flower for your enjoyment. The infloresence is quite congested; I’m hoping to catch one fully flowered this year… it should be quite the show.
Here’s a picture of a strange sandalwood (Santalum freycinetianum) up in the northern Ko’olaus. Typically this species has dull, droopy leaves. As you can see in this individual has glossy leaves that do not looked wilted. The non-native Indian sandalwood (Santalum album) is sparingly naturalized in certain areas of O’ahu but this individual doesn’t look like it either. Mother Nature must laugh at our need to categorize things in tidy, simple packages!
We hiked into West Makaleha gulch to check out the neat dry forest found there. It did turned into a rain soaked adventure. Still, seeing some unique species made the soggy, slippery trek was worth it. In dry hindsight anyway…
Alani (Melicope spp.) are among the most speciose plants groups here in Hawai’i. I haven’t mentioned them much here at Studia Mirabilium because, frankly, I’m not that good keying them out yet. This one, however, stood out. The more common species that I can id are M. clusiifolia and M. rotundifolia. This species (Melicope hosakae) got my attention because the leaves were much larger and were a much lighter shade of green than the other two. Hopefully, I’ll get a larger sample size to see what characters are consistent…
Tucked amongst the other massive palm trees at Foster Botanical Garden is this little unassuming guy. Yet, as you can see above, this palm has a fence built just for it. This native loulu (Pritchardia lowreyana) has an interesting backstory with some potentially large genetic ramifications.
Another book from my vulturine gleaning of the Border’s collapse is this tale: The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth, by Richard Conniff. Considering all the surveying I’m doing and my general interest in natural history, it is a wonder I never came across it before. A story about the humans who risks life and limb to catalogue the life on this planet: how can that not be interesting?
Here’s a shot of a rarer species of Kamakahala (Labordia spp.) This is Labordia fagraeoidea. Like L. hosakana, this species is typically found in wet summit forests. It differs by having big, dull leaves that are not as rugose.
On one hand, this stretch of dry weather has created some awesome conditions for summit hikes. But for the flora’s sake, I hope it breaks soon. In the meantime, I’ll take as much advantage as I can. Saturday, we chose to head up Keahiakahoe via the Moanalua Middle Ridge. The plant life along the way was simple awesome.
*From Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawai’i
Here are shots of 2 different Ha’iwale (Cyrtandra spp.). Above are the flowers of Cyrtandra cordifolia. Notice how hairy the corollas are. The flowers of this species are not as curved as the flowers of Cyrtandra grandiflora shown below:
Studia Mirabilium 