The only known fringed orchid on Kauai might get some company soon thanks to an Illinois botany professor and his students.
Field botanist Steve Perlman said the orchid, the only known member of the Platanthera holochila species in the Alakai Swamp, was reported barely alive May 24.
"It may be dying—that's true, but it isn't dead yet," said Perlman, with the National Tropical Botanical Garden on Kauai.
Wendy Kishida, Plant Extinction Prevention Program coordinator for Kauai, and Vickie Caraway, a botanist at the Department of Land and Natural Resources, flew in by helicopter yesterday, and they told Perlman that the lone plant is growing but not flowering.
That means its condition has not changed in two years, Perlman said.
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