In this seemingly inhospitable environment, Argyroxiphium thrived. Earliest accounts of the range of the Mauna Kea silversword do not suggest rarity; dead stalks were gathered for firewood by explorers in 1825. More than one anecdotal estimate made in the 1920s about the earlier population was that plants numbered in the thousands; one report was that the plants covered the slope so that the sun glared off them. The first documentation of its decline dates to 1892, when it was said to have been once abundant but is now nearly extinct except in the most rugged and inaccessible places.