Back From The Dead, An 'Extinct' Native Tree Thrives

Michael Levine/Civil Beat

KAHANAHAIKI — The haha tree is extinct in the wild, yet here it is standing right in front of me.

It's about 10 feet tall with a slender trunk, ruffled green leaves and a checkerboard of circular scars near the top where branches once grew. It's summer now, so the sweet curved flowers that co-evolved with the beak of Hawaiian honeycreeper birds have come and gone for the year.

The only full-grown haha trees — scientific name Cyanea superba ssp. superba — alive in the forest today were born in a lab. When the last wild surviving plants died almost a decade ago, they were carried out of the forest, underwent autopsies and stripped of their seeds, said Army Environmental Outreach Specialist Candace Russo, who showed me haha on a recent tour of Kahanahaiki Gulch above Makua Valley on the North Shore of Oahu.

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