''Scaevola gracilis'' is a plant in the family

Goodeniaceae Goodeniaceae is a family of flowering plants in the order Asterales. It contains about 404 species in twelve genera. The family is distributed mostly in Australia, except for the genus '' Scaevola'', which is pantropical. Its species are found a ...

, native to the

Kermadec Islands The Kermadec Islands ( mi, Rangitāhua) are a subtropical island arc in the South Pacific Ocean northeast of New Zealand's North Island, and a similar distance southwest of Tonga. The islands are part of New Zealand. They are in total ...

and

Tonga Tonga (, ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga ( to, Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), is a Polynesian country and archipelago. The country has 171 islands – of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in ...

. It was first described in 1856 by

Joseph Dalton Hooker Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (30 June 1817 – 10 December 1911) was a British botanist and explorer in the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For twenty years he served as director of ...

. In 1998, William Russell Sykes united the Tongan ''Scaevola porrecta'' with the Kermadec Islands ''S. gracilis''. The specific epithet, ''gracilis'', is a Latin adjective meaning "slender".

Conservation status

In both 2009 and 2012 it was deemed to be "At Risk - Naturally Uncommon" under the

New Zealand Threat Classification System The New Zealand Threat Classification System is used by the Department of Conservation to assess conservation priorities of species in New Zealand. The system was developed because the IUCN Red List, a similar conservation status system, had some ...

, and this New Zealand classification was reaffirmed in 2018 (due to its restricted range), but with the further comment that it is safe overseas.

References

External links

''Scaevola gracilis'' (Flickr)
{{Taxonbar, from=Q17480610 gracilis Species described in 1856 Plants described in 1856 Taxa named by Joseph Dalton Hooker Flora of the Kermadec Islands Flora of Tonga