Phyllostegia hispida is an endangered species

Endangered species

An endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...

 of flowering plant

Flowering plant

The flowering plants , also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants. Angiosperms are seed-producing plants like the gymnosperms and can be distinguished from the gymnosperms by a series of synapomorphies...

 in the mint

Mentha

Mentha is a genus of flowering plants in the family Lamiaceae . The species are not clearly distinct and estimates of the number of species varies from 13 to 18. Hybridization between some of the species occurs naturally...

 family, Lamiaceae

Lamiaceae

The mints, taxonomically known as Lamiaceae or Labiatae, are a family of flowering plants. They have traditionally been considered closely related to Verbenaceae, but in the 1990s, phylogenetic studies suggested that many genera classified in Verbenaceae belong instead in Lamiaceae...

. It is found only in wet forests at elevations of 2300–4200 ft (701–1,280.2 m) on the island of Molokai

Molokai

Molokai or Molokai is an island in the Hawaiian archipelago. It is 38 by 10 miles in size with a land area of , making it the fifth largest of the main Hawaiian Islands and the 27th largest island in the United States. It lies east of Oahu across the 25-mile wide Kaiwi Channel and north of...

 in Hawaii

Hawaii

Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

. This green vine

Vine

A vine in the narrowest sense is the grapevine , but more generally it can refer to any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent, that is to say climbing, stems or runners...

's loosely spreading branches often form a large mass.

Conservation

Only ten individual specimens were found between 1910 and 1996. P. hispida was thought to be extinct in 1997, but two seedlings were found at The Nature Conservancy

The Nature Conservancy

The Nature Conservancy is a US charitable environmental organization that works to preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive....

's Kamakou Preserve in 2005. Since 2007, 24 wild plants have been discovered. A total of 238 plants are known to currently exist.

P. hispida was classified as endangered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service

United States Fish and Wildlife Service

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is a federal government agency within the United States Department of the Interior dedicated to the management of fish, wildlife, and natural habitats...

 in 2009. P. hispida is the second species to be classified as endangered by the Barack Obama Administration.