Silversword

In one of those weird quirks of nature, there is a plant that grows on Haleakala Volcano and nowhere else called silversword. For whatever reason this plant will only grew on this one particular volcano, and even then only at certain elevations. Because of this tendency to be picky, silversword is a fairly endangered plant. To make matters worse, it is also a plant that will grow a giant flower stalk, bloom in spectacular fashion, and then die. Sadly we did not see a silversword actually blooming, but by the visitor's center we saw one that had just bloomed (and one that was long since dead from blooming).