You say gaudichaudiana, I say gaudichaudii

Posted on April 10, 2011 by Sebastian Marquez

Today’s short post is all about duality. The number two can up for a few plants we saw on today’s hike. Well duality and one pretty native vine.

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The treasures of Hidden Valley

Posted on April 3, 2011 by Sebastian Marquez

looking at the unsuspecting world below...

I went with the O’ahu Plant Extinction Prevention folks to help with 2 very endangered plants found on the windward side of the island: Schidea kaalae and Cyanea truncata. We hiked up a ridgeline to Makaua Gulch, or also known colloquially as “Hidden Valley”.

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C. angustifolia blowing in the wind

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Sebastian Marquez

Every hike I go on, I’m always on the lookout for lobeliads on the rare chance that I actually come across one. Over the weekend, I challenged myself by searching the Pia-Niu Valley area specifically for lobeliads with nothing but my eyes and the modest experience I’ve gained recently for field identification. Let’s see if I’ve actually learned anything…

I was looking for Cyanea lanceolata, hoping dreaming for C. superba subsp. regina (Pia valley was one of the last places it was found back in the 60’s), but this was an unexpected surprise. Cyanea angustifolia is still one of the more common lobeliads. Although I guess that is relative. In all my hikes here, I’ve only seen it in 3 places: ‘Aiea Loop, Manoa Cliff, and now here in Niu Valley. This guy has the most branches I’ve seen on C. angustifolia yet.

10+ hrs hiking, 1 individual. I searched gulch bottoms and windswept ridges without much success. If anything, this shows just how much the lobeliads have declined. Here’s a clade that has radiated so spectacularly, expanded into so many different niches, reduced to needing prior knowledge or dumb luck just to find one. Was it the former or the latter that I had? The education continues…

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Snapshot: Pe’ahi

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Sebastian Marquez

I really need to take some time from hiking and reading scientific literature to learn how to take better pictures.  Anyway, here is one of my better compositions.

Pe’ahi (Microsorum spectrum) is a cute little fern with neat deltate fronds and distinct venation. It doesn’t look like your average fern. Here on O’ahu it is very rare. It is only known from a few scattered locations.

Dan Palmer’s excellent Hawai’i’s Fern and Fern Allies mentions that Pe’ahi can be terrestrial, epiphytic or epipetric, but the few colonies that I’ve seen on my hikes have always been terrestrial with creeping rhizomes. Perhaps in other heretoforth undiscovered locations on O’ahu it grows differently, we just have to find them. Happy searching!

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Birdwatching at ‘Iolani Palace

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Sebastian Marquez

I had some time to check out an interesting spot to watch some birds. ‘Iolani Palace is mere blocks from busy Chinatown and Downtown Honolulu. But even though it’s in the heart of a dense urban area, the palace does have some interesting birds.

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Robotics!

Posted on March 19, 2011 by Sebastian Marquez
A picture of the 2008 FIRST Robotics Competiti...

Image via Wikipedia

This will be the only kind of advertising you’ll see from me on this blog. I don’t (and prefer not to) talk about my previous incarnation as an IT professional, but I have to talk about the awesome FIRST Robotics Competition.

Take high school students, engineering mentors, and lots o’ machinery and you have the foundation for the robotics tournament. Sure the rules of the games can be highly contrived, but the engineering to compete is anything but.

What kind of force does a launcher need to kick a ball through a goal? What’s the best way to pick up rubber tubes? How can a robot grip a pole more efficiently to climb it faster? The math behind these problems is elegant enough, but then to go from paper and theory to actually having some applied answer? Results that you can test and reconfigured? Perhaps I’m projecting a bit of my frustrations in the lack of easily quantifiable results for the conservation work I’m doing. But still, these kids are doing marvelous things.

Playoffs are on Saturday, March 26. I’ll be there rooting for Team ‘Iolani! The atmosphere is competitive, goofy, nerdy… and wonderful.

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Glam shots of the Manoa Cliff Natives

Posted on March 13, 2011 by Sebastian Marquez

We have been working hard at restoring the native forest at our site along the Manoa Cliff trail. While there has been great strides since the project started in 2005, the trail itself outside our area still has some great native plants.

The flora on Pu’u Ohi’a has been described in the past; by Dr. Raymond Fosberg and again by Beth Saxon. I am nowhere near their level, but the plants still are. Sure, the trail is highly degraded, but here is another chance for the plants to shine.

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A brief look at Hawaiian Rutaceae

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Sebastian Marquez

Major components of varied Hawaiian plant communities are the native members of the citrus family (Rutaceae). No tasty oranges here though. But the good thing, at least on O’ahu, is that they are an almost guaranteed sighting on most summit hikes. There are 3 main branches native to Hawai’i: Zanthoxylum, Melicope, and Platydesma.

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Getting to know your Hawaiian Lobeliads #11: Delissea waianaeensis

Posted on March 5, 2011 by Sebastian Marquez

Delissea waianaeensis

  • Conservation Status: Endangered
  • Distribution: O’ahu (Wai’anae range)
  • Date photographed: 2/26/2011
  • Ease of viewing: Difficult
  • *Identification: Form– Branched or unbranched shrubs 1-3 m tall. Leaves– ovate to ovate-lanceolate; blades 12-30 cm long by 6-17 cm wide; margins crenate, denticulate, serrate, or doubly serrate; petioles 6-18 cm long. Flower– hypanthium ovoid to cylindrical; calyx lobes subulate, 0.5-1 mm long; corolla white or greenish white, curved, 45-60 mm long with 1 dorsal knob
  • Phylogenetic comments: While more similar to Cyanea morphologically, studies have shown that Delissea actually seem more closely related to the succulent Brighamia species. D. waianaeensis was recently split from D. subcordata
  • Links: Delissea subcordata SGCN (pdf), Smithsonian Flora of the Hawaiian Islands, UH Botany, Native Hawaiian Plants- Delissea, US Fish and Wildlife Delissea subcordata 5-year review (pdf), Origin, adaptive radiation and diversification of the Hawaiian Lobeliads (Asterales: Campanulaceae) Givnish, Thomas J., et al.  Proc. R. Soc. B. 7 Feb. 2009 vol. 276 no. 1656 407-416
  • Additional Photos:

*From Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawai’i

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The hills have eyes… and really weird flowers

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Sebastian Marquez

I like hiking Ko’olau range because I like the juxtaposition of rare native biota and dense urban environments. That whole sharing the planet thing again. However, I just can’t deny how amazing the native flora is in the Wai’anae range is. So here we go, another trek into the hills above Makua, and more wonderful surprises…

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