The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Kanaloa kahoolawensis
Also called Kahoolawe Kanaloa, Kahoʻolawe Kanaloa
Kanaloa kahoolawensis is a rare, unarmed, low-spreading shrub endemic to Hawaii and the only species in its genus; only two plants have ever been found in the wild, and only one remains on a sea stack off Kahoʻolawe. It is essentially not cultivated, so care advice is limited to general horticultural expectations for a wet-tropical legume shrub.
Kanaloa kahoolawensis, the Ka palupalu o Kanaloa or kohe malama malama o kanaloa, is a species of flowering plant in the legume family, Fabaceae and is endemic to Hawaii. Kanaloa is a monotypic genus with the single species Kanaloa kahoolawensis.
Only two plants have ever been found in the wild. The single remaining plant grows on the cliffs of Aleʻale Puʻuloae on a sea stack off the coast of the Kahoʻolawe. Soils are oxisols derived from basaltic lavas at an elevation of 45–60 m. It is possible that the range of this species previously included other Hawaiian islands; fossilized pollen from plants likely to be in the same genus has been found in core samples taken from sinkholes in Oʻahu's ʻEwa Plain, Maui, and Kauaʻi's Makauwahi Cave. Whether the pollen grains in the samples belong to K. kahoolawensis cannot be determined. As Kahoʻolawe was united with Maui and other islands prehistorically (see also Maui Nui), it is entirely possible that the pollen belongs to K. kahoolawensis. On the other hand, it may also be that the Oʻahu population remains represent another, extinct, species - possibly an ancestor of K. kahoolawensis -, judging from the biogeography of Hawaiian land plants.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Kanaloa kahoolawensis by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
