Moku
Māhuahua
Building native seed production systems
Increasing accessibility to seed and plant materials of common native species to support ecosystem restoration and wildfire recovery at scale.
Native ecosystems are under threat. One of the greatest challenges to their restoration is the lack of native seed.
Most restoration in Hawaiʻi still depends on collecting seed from wild plants. The need for seed exceeds what exists in the wild.
To address this shortage, Moku Māhuahua is supporting local seed collectors, native plant propagators, and researchers within Hawaiʻi. The purpose is to begin establishing and storing bulk wild seed collections of common ʻworkhorseʼ plant species.
Collecting Seed Responsibly
Dedicated staff carefully collect, process and store seed from healthy wild populations to represent species across their ranges and avoid harming plant communities. We allocate portions of each collection for near-term use by landowners, long-term backup for wild populations, and for some species, the building blocks for seed production.
Growing More Seed
Instead of relying on wild collections alone, the program employs seed production strategies that maintain native plant population diversity and increase seed quantities available for restoration and disaster response within given geographies.
Working Together
We depend on partnerships and collective decision-making. We work with private landowners, government agencies, conservation organizations, farmers, and community groups to build seed production and sharing networks that support restoration where it is needed most.
Collect to the zone.
Seed is not interchangeable across a landscape. Material collected in a dry zone rarely establishes in a wet one, so moisture zones function as practical seed transfer zones — match the collection to the planting ground.
Moisture zones after Price, Jacobi et al. 2012 (USGS OFR 2012-1192). Zone boundaries are a planning aid, not a substitute for local provenance records. Basemap © OpenStreetMap contributors, © CARTO.
When to go.
Peak fruiting month for 26 native and canoe species, derived from annotated iNaturalist observations. Each species is placed in its single strongest month — a collector plans a trip, not a year. Species with fewer than 25 annotated records are excluded rather than guessed at.
Source · iNaturalist plant-phenology annotations, Hawaiʻi observations only. Peak month indicates when fruit was most often observed, not a guarantee of viable seed. Ground-truth before mobilizing a crew.
What this means for you.
The benefits of the program to participating landowners include systematic collections and long-term curation of seeds from wild plant populations on their lands. Moku Māhuahua can also support programs on their own collection, storage, and production strategies through technical expertise and partner networking.
As partner involvement in seed production expands, Moku Māhuahua will facilitate communication and develop policy guidelines to support access to and distribution of native seeds for ongoing restoration needs and the unforeseen impacts of wildfires.
UH Land and Ocean Conservation Futures, Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation
tchambers.oanrp@gmail.comUH Mānoa Ecosystems and Landcare (UHELP), Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resilience
trauerni@hawaii.edu