The time lapses and live climate data that illustrate my life on top of a mountain sometimes fail to show the extreme weather native plants like me endure...
The video above (taken by wet and cold humans) gives an example of a gusty and rainy day when I lost several leaves due to wind damage.
In many cases, extreme weather can make conservation efforts challenging. A recent review of over 500 studies that evaluated ecological consequences of extreme weather (e.g. heatwaves, droughts, wind-storms, etc.) showed consistently negative impacts across species, sometimes leading to steep population declines or local extirpations. As additional warming is likely to augment extreme weather, this is likely something that will increasingly impact me and many other rare Hawaiian plants.
References:
Maxwell et al 2018, Diversity and Distributions.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2018.