National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG)

Fleming Arboretum Entrance

October 29, 2007

Aloha,

NTBG will be planting 2 Alani seedlings in their McBryde Garden on Kauai this week. They will be planted in the garden’s native section under expert care. Distribution and outplanting of the Alani on a different island will help assure the survival of the Melicope knudsenii.

Mike De Motta, NTBG assistant director
Living Collections and Horticulture

July 18, 2007

Aloha,

Michelei passed on your email to me regarding the above mentioned plants. I will try and find a good spot in one of our gardens, possibly Limahul Garden in Haena, to plant this rare species. Kauai also has this species but it is also very rare, down to two individuals I believe and they are way back in Koaie Canyon.

The other location is at Kahanu Garden in Hana. We’ll see if they are willing to adopt these rare plants.

Mahalo for the opportunity to grow these.
Mike De Motta

June 1, 2007

What information I can provide is that the seeds that were sent to the garden were sown on the surface of cinder, watered once a day, and grown in the glasshouse (standard practice here). Four seeds germinated and were potted up, of which two survived and can be seen in the photo above.

I have spoken with our nursery manager and he would actually prefer that the plants be returned to their natural habitat on Maui. If your arboretum has no dire need for the plants, we could send them to our sister garden, Kahanu, to be planted, or they could stay here on Kauai to be planted and cared for.

Most sincererly,
Michelei Kikuchi
Curator of Plant Records
National Tropical Botanical Garden

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *