I'm sure this is a familiar one, but not to me. In Costa Rica, it's an outdoor plant. Well, in Costa Rica, I guess all plants are outdoor plants. Identification welcome. Thank you.
I agree with Ron. Plants like this with white petals and a very large staminal column with long filaments don't seem quite identical with wild Hawaiian H. arnottianus and have sometimes been treated as cultivars of H. rosa-sinensis, but that 'species' is really a rag-bag of hybrid forms. The genetics and breeding history of the cultivated shrub hibiscuses have yet to be investigated. It seems possible to me that the Hawaiian 'endemic' species were human introductions, as their affinities are with Mascarene endemics.
Well, I've now labelled my photo exactly as you proposed, to remind myself: "Hibiscus (of a type like H. arnottianus)". Hawaiian birds, I've read, are likewise something of a "zoo", in which people have introduced many species. Many of the Hawaiian species have died out, both because of habitat loss and competition from intrusive species. Costa Rican cloud forests are not pristine, but they are in comparatively good shape. The very first time I made a several-days walk in Costa Rica, however, the fantastic beauty which overwhelmed my sight was of introduced Impatiens flowers. As I walked in solitude along my trail and across numerous streams, on either side of me the forest was bordered in bright, brilliant pink, extending from the trail edges to higher than my head. The Impatiens were visually intoxicating. Luckily, I was carrying no camera—because any photographs I might otherwise have taken would have been disappointing. Nothing could come close to being there. The world was pink; bright pink. Well, there was every colour of green there, too, with the lianas and epiphytes and giant trees reaching up like ghosts within the cloudforest mists—to be sure—but the world was bright pink, nonetheless. The Impatiens were continuous, uninterrupted—uninterruptable—mile upon mile. Bright pink. Just try to describe the rest of the stage while the prima ballerina is dancing, and you'll know how overwhelming was that one single species; that one colour. I have a scientific background, and my very best guesses and estimates, which I made mentally as I walked, assured me I was not looking at millions, but rather at billions, of pink Impatiens flowers. Such an extreme was an unusual occurrence, and I have not seen it since. That was in May 2004. I was simply there when it happened. Since then I've seen Impatience flowers in that same forest, yes; billions of Impatiens flowers, never again. Tony and Ron, thanks very much, both of you.
There's lots of non-native birds flying around in Hawaii but those are definitely of known, recent foreign origin. The hibiscus hypothesis presented here is that wild ones known to science as having arisen in Hawaii may instead have been brought there by people, presumably ancient Polynesians. A possible immediate source of doubt about that idea is that there are related Hawaiian genera that have evolved specialized features used to interact with native birds. These may be quite similar to the wild species present there and placed within the genus Hibiscus except for having extreme flower shapes. Due to extreme geographic isolation in combination with great age the Hawaiian chain has a biological history of small numbers of types of organisms expanding into comparatively large or at least diverse species complexes - such as honey-creepers with all different kinds of bill shapes, violet relations ranging up to a species that perches the typical rosette of leaves on a tall woody stem, lobelia family plants varying from herbaceous to tree-like, a different species of land snail in every valley, caterpillars that became carnivorous, blind cave spiders and so on. All based on an estimated average successful colonization of once every 10,000 years - with the mallow family being one of these.
It is fascinating. So much diversity, such experimental morphology, might make us wonder if one day there is even the possibility of Homo sapiens acquiring some primitive level of real intelligence—or maybe that is even too outlandish to suppose. I believe we are doing well quantitatively, and badly qualitatively. I've always been fascinated by concepts such as you're explaining. When I was in my teens, half a century ago, I "wanted to be a scientist" when I grew up, but the more I learned the less I knew. I gradually began to ask more questions than was stylish. Now I have so many questions that I have no room to put them anywhere, unless I throw out more and more of the concrete facts I once knew, and store my questions there. I hope to continue learning until I die. I would like to learn something new and exciting on the very last day. I place enormous importance on learning, and I love the process of learning. If I come anywhere near my aspiration to learn until my last day, I shall by then know precisely nothing at all for sure. Thanks for the interesting perspectives regarding Hawaii. I like that sort of thing.
