A new plant species has been discovered deep in a Hawaiian rainforest that experts say may be the only one of its kind. Cyanea heluensis is related to other native plants known as hāhā, but has unique leaves and gently curved, long, white flowers. Cyanea heluensis Scientific classification Kingdom: Plantae Clade: Tracheophytes Clade: Angiosperms Clade: Eudicots Clade: Asterids Order: Asterales Family: Campanulaceae Genus: Cyanea Species: C. heluensis Binomial name Cyanea heluensis H. Oppenheimer New plant species found in Hawaii produces long flowers that look like 'uncooked French fries' | Daily Mail Online Hawaii DLNR (Department of Land and Natural Resources)
Thanks for posting this. I saw it yesterday on Facebook. Such an interesting looking plant. I didn't think the flowers looked any more like French fries than they looked like other Campanulaceae family members (Lobelia, bellflowers), not that I know any of the other members of that family.
People say that this world of ours is getting smaller and smaller and the only new things to find is out there in space. But low and behold the horticultural world again proves otherwise. I also read it online yesterday, but it's also good to have a record of it on the forum, so thankyou @togata57.
Don't know current thinking but a past belief is that a small lobelia generally on the order of one like Lobelia erinus managed to make to Hawaii at some point (average rate of natural colonization by a new animal or plant in pre human Hawaii once every 10,000 years, due to how the Islands are out in the middle of the Pacific and the winds reaching there blow the long way around, so that something has to have survived an incredible journey in order to arrive there in viable condition). And that this provided the basis for diversification into a variety of growth and flower forms now interpreted as consisting of multiple different genera. All arising in the absence of any mammals except for a bat (whenever it entered the picture), with the extinctions probably starting way back when the first Hawaiians arrived with their livestock (pigs) and their stowaways (rats). To be followed thousands of years later by goats, cattle and so on. And eventually sometimes quite large scale farming and ranching, urbanization of flat areas and housing developments filling valleys and climbing up hillsides.
