By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Columnist

A native tomato relative once common to Hawai'i, Maui and Lana'i was thought to be extinct for half a century when Lena Schnell, a biologist for the Army at the Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island, stumbled across a population of 13 of the plants near Pu'u Anahulu.

"It was probably in the remotest spot on the Big Island, and a place that had never been hit by fire," said Sean Gleason, natural resource manager for the Army at PTA.

Like much of the saddle region between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, it was a vast dryland forest area, remote, largely roadless — a landscape of rugged lava that is very difficult to travel, even on foot.

Schnell found the plants in 1997. The original site has been fenced to keep goats from eating the plants, and a second wild population, found last year with six plants, has also been fenced.

But that's not all. Today, the shrub known to science as Solanum incompletum is growing in a series of fenced areas on federal and state properties on the Big Island. Hawaiians knew the plant as popolo, or popolo ku mai.

Gleason said biologists on his staff have been able to get seeds to grow with difficulty — they get only 5 percent germination — but they have produced enough plants to keep planting it out. One of the healthiest populations is on a fenced state reserve at Pu'u Huluhulu, where the Army and the state Division of Forestry and Wildlife have worked together on preserving the species.

There are now more than 50 of the tomato-kin at that site alone.

Gleason said it's an interesting shrub, and one of the few Hawaiian plants with thorns. Most Hawaiian natives have lost natural defenses like thorns because they didn't need them in Hawai'i's herbivore-free environment.

"That leads us to think that this is a relatively recent arrival — before Polynesians, but recently enough that it never entirely lost its thorns," he said.

It's quite an attractive, though odd-looking plant. Its red thorns stick right out of the faces of its green leaves. Its orange fruits, a little smaller than cherry tomato fruits, are pretty tasteless but not apparently toxic, Gleason said. And, it's just one of a number of plants the Army is caring for in the area.

"We've got six others that are just as rare," Gleason said.

The Army has about 7,000 acres fenced to keep grazing animals out and to protect native forest areas. While the Army technically can train inside those fenced areas, as a matter of course, it doesn't, Gleason said.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com, (808) 245-3074, or P.O. Box 524, Lihu'e, HI 96766.