Scaevola hobdyi (Goodeniaceae), an Enigmatic New Species from West Maui, Hawaiian Islands

Abstract

Scaevola hobdyi is a newly described species from the West Maui Mountains, Hawaiian Islands. It is unusual among the other Hawaiian species of Scaevola sect. Scaevola in its linear leaves, apparently small flowers, and compact habit. It is not clear if this species represents a separate introduction from the Australian region or is a highly specialized derivative of the primary Hawaiian lineage. This imperfectly known species has been collected only once and is likely extinct. In 1980 Robert Hobdy, a Hawaii State Forester on Maui, collected a single specimen of a plant with tufted leaves and flower buds, but no flowers or fruit. It represented a plant that he had never seen before and he saw only a single individual along the 'Eke Trail on West Maui, a moderately disturbed wet forest area. He sent it to the Bishop Museum where Harold St. John annotated it as Lysimachia. Derral Herbst and I saw it several years later during the writing of the Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawai'i but, because the specimen had no flowers or fruit, we were unable to place it in a family. Tim Flynn of the National Tropical Botanical Garden finally suggested that it represented an unusual member of the Goodeniaceae, a suggestion with which we agreed. I sent the specimen to Roger Carolin at the National Herbarium of New South Wales in Australia. He confirmed it as an undescribed species of Scaevola. Hobdy and other local botanists have repeatedly searched for additional plants of this species over the past decade without success. It has now been 15 years since its collection and it appears unlikely to be rediscovered. So, despite the lack of good material, because it is clearly highly distinctive, I am here describ-