"“We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am definitely a little worried.” "


Chinese premier Wen Jiabao 12th March 2009


""We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we'd like to do our best to preserve that system."


Timothy Geithner US Secretary of the Treasury, previously President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.1/3/2009

Sunday, November 16, 2008

The rarest flower in the world Brighamia insignis


Brighamia insignis also known as alula to the Hawaiian islanders where it is an endemic plant of scrublands on the islands of Kaua'i and Niihau is also called Cabbage on a Stick or the Hawaiian Pine. In the wild there are said to be 65 plants and natural reproduction has finished due to the disappearance of their sole pollinator which is an unknown sphingid moth with an extraordinarily long tongue (probably itself extinct) which can reach the base of the lengthy calyx. All but one population, consisting of a single plant, is currently known in the wild on Kaua`i (Ken Wood, pers. comm. June 2007).

Dutch horticulturalists have produced clones from root meristems and dispersed them worldwide hoping that someone can produce seeds. The above flowers , wich have rarely been reported on these plants were photographed last week on a single plant in Cyprus.

It is highly unlikely that the plants are self fertile - we will report the success of the human replacement of the essential moth , by a lady armed with a scalpel and a paint brush.

See -Gemmill,C. E. C., T. A. Ranker, D. Ragone, S. P. Perlman, K. R.Wood. 1998. Conservation genetics of the endangered endemic Hawaiian genus Brighamia. American Journal of Botany 85(4): 528-539.)

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