“A rare, critically endangered fern that grows on ohia and a few other native trees was recently rediscovered on Kauai by a team of botanists.
The plant is called pendant kihi fern, or adenophorus periens. It is threatened by climate change, which is exacerbating periods of drought, as well as competition for habitat from invasive weeds.
The fern was spotted in May by members of the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resource’s Plant Extinction Prevention Program which was established in 1990 to save the 239 native species left in the state that each had fewer than 50 plants remaining in the wild.
Botanists Susan Deans and Scott Heintzman were near the end of their workday, climbing up waterfalls and bushwhacking their way back to a helicopter landing zone, when they spotted it, according to a DLNR press release.
PEPP is consulting with plant experts and propagators to see if they can get a frond, the reproductive part of the fern, growing in a nursery….”
View the whole story here: https://www.civilbeat.org/beat/critically-endangered-fern-rediscovered-on-kauai/