Bishop Museum offers new Botany Checklist mapping history of Hawaiʻi’s flora

Bishop Museum is offering an updated Botany Checklist of native and non-native plants of the islands — alive and extinct — as a free resource to the public.

The checklist of native and naturalized vascular plants in Hawaiʻi — compiled by botany researchers and technicians from the museum’s Natural Sciences Department — can be accessed and downloaded at the Plants of Hawaiʻi website.

The state’s museum of natural and cultural history checklist features up-to-date information about all 3,133 plants found in the islands from Hōlanikū, also known as Kure Atoll, to Hawai‘i Island.

It provides science-based information for naturalists, land managers, field biologists, scientists and anyone who seeks to understand the biogeography of the Hawaiian Islands.

“We’re offering the Botany Checklist as a free resource to share our data with researchers and citizen scientists alike, with the ultimate goal of bringing more awareness to our islands’ precious biodiversity,” said Bishop Museum Botany Research Specialist Miles Thomas in an announcement about the new checklist.

Notable findings from the November 2025 checklist include:

• 68% of native species have Hawaiian names recorded.
• Invasive species have been successfully eradicated 66 times from a full island.
• Grasses are the most diverse family in the checklist but are largely non-native or invasive.
• Lobeliods — including hāhā, koli‘i, ‘ōhā wai and ‘ōlulu — are the most diverse native family, with Cyanea being the largest endemic genus of plants in Hawaiʻi.

Common names, whether it is native or invasive, conservation statuses and list of islands where it is found are provided for each species.

This is the first checklist to also have extirpation, or local extinction, statuses at an island level — for example, a species that is still present on Kaua‘i but no longer known to live on O‘ahu.

Bishop Museum found an average of 60 native species are extirpated from each of the main Hawaiian Islands, with Lāna‘i being especially affected with 151 known species now having disappeared from the island.

Hawaiʻi’s endemism rate — of plants unique to Hawaiʻi and found nowhere else — is 90%, among the highest in the world.

Kauaʻi has the most endemic plants with 567 followed by:

• Maui: 565.
• Oʻahu: 514.
• Hawaiʻi Island: 432.
• Molokaʻi: 402.
• Lānaʻi: 282.
• Niʻihau: 50.
• Kahoʻolawe: 43.

“While this high number of endemic plants makes Hawaiʻi a truly unique place, it also means many of these plants are highly vulnerable, as they have not adapted to current threats facing the Hawaiian landscape such as invasive species, human impact and shifts in climate,” Thomas said.

The museum recorded 139 endemic plants that are now extinct or extinct in the wild, with hundreds more in danger of dying out.

“As the so-called ‘extinction capital of the world,’ it’s extremely alarming how many native species we lose every year,” Thomas added.

Non-native species now outnumber native plants, with 55% of all flora in the checklist non-native.

“New endemic species have been discovered at approximately 2.4 per year over the past 30 years, and are generally decelerating as we run out of new habitat to survey,” said Bishop Museum Invasive Species Program Manager Kevin Faccenda in the checklist announcement. “On the other hand, new non-native, naturalized species have been discovered at 13.9 per year over the past 30 years and show no signs of decelerating.”

That means the state’s flora is changing at an alarming rate — changing toward an alien-dominated landscape that threatens the endemic biodiversity of the islands, greatly impacting their natural and cultural history.

“Native ecosystems provide us with immeasurable benefits such as food, fiber and drinking water, in addition to their natural beauty,” Thomas said.

The checklist was created and is regularly updated under the Hawaiʻi Biological Survey, a Bishop Museum program established in 1992 by Hawaiʻi Legislature to maintain comprehensive records of the state’s plants, animals and fungi.

It is updated based on the museum’s natural history collection, specifically Botany’s Herbarium Pacificum, which contains the largest and most comprehensive collection of Hawaiian and tropical Pacific Island plant specimens in the world, including more than 157,000 from Hawaiʻi.

Nearly every record in the checklist has a specimen in the herbarium, which allows the botany staff to confirm identifications and other data.

“We hope that our global community can use the checklist to learn more about the plants of Hawaiʻi and the habitats they reside in,” Thomas said. “The more we all learn about our ʻāina and the living beings that reside on them, the more we can care for and preserve them for generations to come.”

The checklist is available for public download at the Plants of Hawaiʻi website.