Seuss invention it's been described as "a cabbage on top of a bowling pin." The alula's natural habitat is the precipitous Na Pali cliffs, where only a few individuals remain. Limahuli's signature plant is the alula (Brighamia insignis), a lobelia relative that could have been a Dr. Botanical garden researchers rediscovered the plant, which can grow 30 feet tall, in a remote part of the Limahuli Preserve in 1976. There's the koki'o ke'oke'o, a delicately scented white hibiscus (Hibiscus waimeae subspecies hannerae) once thought extinct.
![alula plant alula plant](http://demo.towerthemes.com/tt_alula/image/cache/catalog/slider/slider1-alula1-1110x570.jpg)
Their seeds, once dispersed by native birds, are now destroyed by introduced rats. Hawaii as a whole had 22 loulu species several are now extinct. There's Pritchardia limahuliensis, a species of loulu - native fan palm - endemic to that single valley. Short of a hike into the Alakai Swamp, Kauai's boggy heart, the Limahuli is the best introduction to a botanical lost world.
![alula plant alula plant](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/52/ea/02/52ea028a06e82cbad2b50b8a7434d2c1.jpg)
![alula plant alula plant](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/7c/ca/d1/7ccad193e9772df9656561fc4ecff0ec--extinct-cabbages.jpg)
Unlike the McBryde, the Limahuli displays the natives in their ecological context. That's the site of its other two Kauai gardens: the Allerton, a former private estate designed in the 1930s, and the McBryde, with native plants, "canoe plants" introduced by Polynesian voyagers - taro, ti, breadfruit, sugarcane - and palms, exotic culinary plants and ornamentals. The group's mission, conserving Hawaii's native plants, includes searching the backlands for undiscovered or forgotten species, and propagating them in a state-of-the-art facility near Poipu on the South Shore.