By Jon Letman
Thanks to our community of staff, supporters, and partners, we celebrated many wins for tropical plants on our 60th anniversary year. With every discovery, initiative, and innovation, we are growing a brighter future for plants and people together.
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Join usKahanu Garden staff and Kupu service members in the Kahanu Preserve.
Restoring a Hala Forest on Maui
2024 was a landmark year for our Kahanu Preserve in Hāna. The 120-acre coastal preserve is one of the largest remaining intact hala (Pandanus) forests on east Maui. As part of our efforts to perpetuate, understand, and facilitate community connections with this cherished space, we removed invasive species while clearing nearly 4,000 feet of trail. Doing so has allowed us to conduct more thorough botanical surveys, helping our staff and partners better understand the remaining biodiversity, identify areas most in need of attention, and document the resources along the coast.
Within this native hala forest, companion species like ʻōhiʻa (Metrosideros sp.) and lama (Diospyros sandwicensis) can be found. There is also evidence to suggest the area has previously supported high fern diversity. Using the iNaturalist online platform, NTBG is sharing the findings of our biological surveys for anyone to explore this rich environment. As 2024 draws to a close, NTBG will continue to care for the Kahanu Preserve and help connect cultural practitioners, conservationists, and other members of the community to the space and learn from their ʻike (knowledge) for more informed and meaningful engagement with the land and plants that it supports.
Ongoing work in Kahanu Preserve is supported by grants from Fondation Franklinia, Kosasa Foundation, and the University of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant program.
NTBG and our partners continue to discover and collect new plant species previously unknown to science.
New Species Discoveries and Collection Firsts
This year NTBG scientists and our partners discovered, named, and published descriptions of five Hawaiian plant species on Kauaʻi. All single-island endemics, the new plant species include haʻiwale (Cyrtandra obliquifolia), naʻenaʻe (Dubautia haupuensis), alani (Melicope sp. nov.), kōlea (Myrsine cirrhosa), and Schiedea waiahuluensis. The Schiedea, a member of the Carnation family, was first photographed on a sheer cliff face in Waimea Canyon using a drone in 2022. Soon after, NTBG used a drone and the Mamba robotic sampling arm to collect plant cuttings, the first time a plant was discovered and collected with a drone. By describing previously unnamed species, NTBG can introduce them to the broader scientific community and advocate for their immediate conservation needs.
In 2024, NTBG also successfully outplanted rare endemic plants discovered or rediscovered in recent years. For example, hāhā (Cyanea kuhihewa), once believed to be extinct, was rediscovered by NTBG and The Nature Conservancy of Hawai‛i staff in 2017. After propagating wild-collected plant material in our nursery, over 400 individual plants were outplanted in the Upper Limahuli Preserve. By working with our partners locally, nationally, and internationally, we are demonstrating the power of collaboration, the value of embracing new technology, and the importance of traditional field work and rough terrain collecting, rooted supported by botany, taxonomy, horticulture, and a deep respect for nature.
Community members show off newly adopted ʻōhiʻa trees from the Grow Aloha plant giveaway at Kahanu Garden.
Grow Aloha Plant Adoption Program
Launched in March of this year, NTBG’s free Grow Aloha plant adoption program has distributed more than 1,500 plants across four sites on Kauaʻi, Maui, and Molokaʻi. Grow Aloha features native Hawaiian plants like loulu palms, palapalai ferns, and ʻaʻaliʻi (Dodonaea viscosa), as well as Hawaiian heritage crops such as ʻulu (breadfruit). By distributing these plants through monthly giveaways, the program invites local communities to care for and deepen their pilina (connection) with Hawaiʻi’s beloved plants.
To further inspire participants and the general public, NTBG produces a Grow Aloha podcast and how-to care videos, sharing biocultural and horticultural insights about the featured plants.
Efforts are underway to expand the program in 2025 as part of the Year of Our Community Forests initiative, allowing Grow Aloha to reach even more communities across Hawaiʻi.
Dr. Brian Sidoti, director of The Kampong (right), working in the lab with Miami-Dade high school students.
Science and Education “Flourish Forward” at The Kampong
In 2024, with support from the Kenan Charitable Trust, staff from The Kampong and the International Center for Tropical Botany (ICTB) at The Kampong conducted a range of hands-on plant science training initiatives. Cynthia Toledo, education programs manager at The Kampong, coordinated Miami students and teachers in working with Florida International University faculty to carry out research on marine macroalgae and plant morphology and pollination behavior. These collaborations build student confidence and capacity while scientific findings will inform teacher-written curricula.
This year, ICTB and Kampong staff mentored high school interns, advanced a food forest design project, and supported data collection for ongoing Bromeliad research at The Kampong. Other education programs include the Barnyard elementary afterschool and tropical botany hands-on field training at ICTB. 2024 saw a host of community outreach programs and initiatives at The Kampong including public exhibitions, providing a public space to experience the intersection between science and art.
NTBG’s Breadfruit Institute is perpetuating the breadfruit collection on Maui and Kauaʻi.
Protecting and Reproducing Breadfruit, the Tree of Life
NTBG has conducted fieldwork across the Pacific since the mid-1970s, including collections of breadfruit from 34 Pacific Island nations. Today NTBG’s Breadfruit Institute (BFI) curates and manages the world’s largest and most diverse breadfruit collection. With many mature and aging trees, careful maintenance and planning are critical. In 2024, breadfruit collection manager Kaitu Erasito systematically performed the important work of duplicating 25 at-risk trees, of which 11 have been successfully out-planted in a newly designated area at Kahanu Garden on Maui. Duplication of at-risk trees includes horticultural methods like air layering and harvesting root cuttings. On Kauaʻi, in the McBryde Garden, 31 trees in the Regenerative Organic Breadfruit Agroforest (ROBA) demonstration were pruned by arborists to reduce vertical growth and mitigate potential wind damage.
As of this October, 185 plant types were grown within ROBA, with BFI agroforestry technician Neal Uno harvesting 1.4 tons of breadfruit (the equivalent of one thousand individual fruits) along with 0.5 tons of other agroforestry produce, all of which was donated to the Kauaʻi Independent Food Bank and NTBG employees and their families. Breadfruit Institute staff have also planned and participated in educational programs, community outreach, horticulture workshops, and tree adoption giveaways. On Maui, NTBG staff are contributing to ongoing community collaborative efforts to safeguard and perpetuate historic breadfruit varieties rescued from the 2023 Maui wildfires with two Lahaina varieties now conserved at Kahanu Garden. This year, through BFI’s global partners, nearly 2,300 tissue-culture breadfruit trees were distributed to programs in Uganda, the Bahamas, and the Cook Islands.
Limahuli Garden is an ideal setting for biocultural education and community outreach.
Community Outreach at Limahuli Garden
Renowned for its rich cultural heritage and biological diversity, Limahuli Garden and Preserve is an ideal setting for place-based environmental education and community outreach. In 2024, in addition to welcoming various school groups, educators, interns, and cultural practitioners, Limahuli hosted multiple community events that promoted biosecurity, environmental awareness, and biocultural practices. In addition to spring and summer education programs, Limahuli staff also worked with a local digital content creator on an innovative project to retell the story of Pōhaku O Kane.
In August, around 250 visitors attended an ʻAwa Festival in Limahuli Garden which included guest speakers and lectures sharing cultural knowledge and celebrating the conservation and use of the ʻawa (Piper methysticum) plant and its many cultivars. November saw around 450 visitors to Limahuli Garden for the ʻŌhiʻa Love Festival which offered education and important best practices for protecting ʻōhiʻa (Metrosideros spp.) from the Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death fungal pathogen while also celebrating and appreciating this culturally and ecologically invaluable tree. Also in November, Limahuli hosted a fashion show featuring clothing by a local Kauaʻi designer who is inspired by native plants at Limahuli Garden. Meanwhile, construction of Limahuli Garden’s new 1,200 sq. ft. cultural multipurpose building is expected to be complete by early 2025.
Digitizing mosses and lichens in NTBG’s Botanical Research Center on Kauaʻi.
Preserving and Understanding Lichens, Mosses, and other Bryophytes
With the support of a National Science Foundation grant, NTBG embarked on the digitization of the bryophytes (mosses, liverworts, hornworts) and lichens housed in the herbarium. To date, science and conservation assistant Amanda Vernon has digitized more than 7,800 specimens of bryophytes and lichens in NTBG’s collections, with new specimens being continuously added. The high-resolution images and accompanying metadata have been submitted to the Global Consortium of Bryophytes and Lichens, providing invaluable research assets for scientists around the world. NTBG is part of a collaboration between 28 botanical gardens, universities, and museums contributing digital photographs that will represent millions of preserved plant specimens.
Despite their foundational role, bryophytes and lichens are relatively understudied compared to large flowering trees and shrubs, but each of these plant groups play a vital role in supporting a wide range of ecosystems that provide habitat for insects, arthropods, and other plants. Among the earliest plants to colonize Hawaiʻi, bryophytes grow on trees and rocks, capturing cloud moisture that trickles into the earth. Lichens grow on young lava fields and provide a home for seeds and spores. Hawaiʻi is home to around 470 bryophytes with lichen estimates ranging between 800 and 2,000 species, more than half of which are endemic. In September, NTBG hosted a moss workshop led by Jim Shevock of the California Academy of Sciences with 16 participants from conservation partner agencies and organizations across Kauaʻi.
These “Plant Wins of 2024” are made possible with the generous support of people like you. Help us grow a brighter tomorrow for tropical plants through a donation today.