| Hawaii Gardens Tell Ancient Story |
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By Catherine Watson
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune Hawaii is so lush that you can see a great cross-section of the state's plant life without leaving your car. But if you're an avid gardener, visits to some botanical gardens are a must. There's a caveat, however: Don't assume, as I did, that botanical gardens are going to be full of pretty flowers. They're full of plants, and that's not the same. Whether you find that interesting depends on how you feel about horticulture. I took two garden tours last spring, one given by the Bishop Museum on its grounds in Honolulu, the other in a branch of the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) on the island of Kauai. At the Bishop Museum, the guide was a cheerful young man with native Hawaiian blood and a sense of humor. He started off beside a coconut palm on the front lawn. "It's amazing what's not native," he said. Coconuts, for example, aren't native to Hawaii. Neither are pineapples, papayas, mangoes, oranges, sugar cane or thousands of other plants associated with the islands. The ancient Polynesians brought the coconut with them when they settled Hawaii, our guide said. Coconut palms provided food, drink, drinking vessels and housing materials -- but not apparel, he said, holding up a small brown cup made from a coconut's inner seed. "It was not used as a bra! That was a 20th-century costume idea." Nearby was a small pond full of green plants with their roots in the water and deep-green leaves shaped like big arrowheads. "Here's Luau Food 101," the guide said, introducing us to taro, the ancient Hawaiians' staple crop. Hawaiians still harvest the tuber of the taro, then steam it, mash it and thin it with water to make the famous bland paste called poi. In pre-contact Hawaii, "the average man ate seven pounds of poi a day," the guide said. "Babies are still weaned from breast milk to poi, because it's so digestible." Taro was so important that in Hawaiian religion, "it's the earthly form of one of the four major gods here -- Kane, god of water," he said. Only men could work in the taro fields "because women menstruate. They were considered unclean, so they weren't allowed to touch the body of Kane." We stopped by a paper mulberry tree, in a realm over which women held sway. They were responsible for making kapa, a cloth made by pounding together thin strips of this tree's inner bark. Other Polynesians made bark cloth, too, but "Hawaii represents the pinnacle of kapa making," the guide said; the Bishop Museum's extensive collections showcase beautifully patterned examples. On Kauai, fittingly nicknamed the Garden Isle, I learned specifics on where Hawaii's plants came from: 1,200 were native species, 32 were brought in by ancient Polynesians and at least 10,000 were "brought in after Capt. Cook," a guide said as she drove me and two other passengers through a lovely landscape. "People started bringing in whatever they liked." There, too, the most interesting plants were Polynesian imports in the "canoe garden." But the prettiest were more recent imports -- a stand of bamboo, for example, or a spray of purple orchids springing from the crotch of an old tree. Outside of gardening circles, the National Tropical Botanical Garden isn't well known. I read about it not long before I left on the trip and was surprised to find out that it is not one garden, but five: three on Kauai, one on Maui and one in Florida. In Hawaii, the focus is on native Hawaiian plants, the others brought in by ancient Polynesians and endangered ones from all over the world. "Hawaii is the endangered-species capital of the world, particularly in native plants," said spokeswoman Janet Leopold. The NTBG was chartered by Congress in 1964 and began acquiring land in 1970, she said. It gets no government funding, surviving on donations and bequests. Its mission is to research and conserve native plants and to educate the public about them. There's a heavy focus on ethnobotany -- "how man uses plants," Leopold said, a field that includes ethnomedicine. One rain-forest plant, brought from Samoa, may hold hope for AIDS. These are its three gardens on Kauai: - Allerton Garden: The first land acquired by the group, this is now the scientific and research collection. Tours begin at the Bill and Jean Lane Visitor Center across from Spouting Horn Park (west of Poipu on Kauai's south shore). Guided tours cost $30 per person and are offered Monday through Saturday. Reservations are necessary. Call 1-808-742-2623.
- McBryde Garden: Self-guided walking tours start from the visitor center Monday through Saturday; $15 per person, no reservations necessary.
- Limahuli Garden: In Hawaiian, the name means "turning hands," Leopold explained; it recalls the spot where the first Polynesians settled on Kauai. Taro plantations there date back 1,000 years, she said.
Tours begin near Haena State Park on Kauai's north shore, a quarter-mile before Ke'e Beach. Guided and self-guided tours are given Tuesday through Friday and on Sunday. Costs are $10 for a 1 to 1-1/2-hour self-guided tour, $15 for a 2 to 2-1/2-hour guided tour. Call 1-808-826-1053. Elsewhere -- Kahanu Garden, in Hana on Maui, was named after one of the original native families there. The Florida garden is the Kampong, in Coral Gables. The name means "village" in Malaysian, Leopold said. Also a bequest, this garden's founder was horticulturalist David Fairchild, who introduced the avocado to the United States, among other tropical fruit cultivars. (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)
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