 |
National Tropical Botanical Garden wages war against plants’ extinction
The National Tropical Botanical Garden offers plenty of beautiful flowers, with three sites on Kauai, Hawaii’s “Garden Isle.” Here visitors can get off the beach and learn more about the local flora.
But one aspect of what takes place at the National Tropical Botanical Garden goes well beyond aesthetics. Resident scientists face the challenge of snatching the Pacific islands’ quickly disappearing plants from the brink of extinction.
“Most of our visitors to Hawaii look at this beautiful, lush landscape and they just think, ‘It’s paradise’,” said Charles R. “Chipper” Wichman, garden director, gesturing to the verdant valley stretching out below his office window on Kauai. “They have no idea that what they are viewing is a war zone between our native plants that are trying to hold on to a space and all these invasive plants and animals that are trying to take it away from them.”
(Source: Associated Press via MSNBC)
