Gardens of the World : FOSTER BOTANICAL GARDEN, Honolulu, Hawaii

The Foster Botanical Garden is located on Vineyard Boulevard in the center of Honolulu, Hawaii, i.e. in a highly urban area. It is the oldest of the five botanical gardens administered by the city. It started in 1853 when Queen Kalama leased a small area of land to William Hildebrand, a young German doctor and botanist.

Many of the large trees in the garden were planted by Dr. Hildebrand during his twenty year tenure. Then the property was sold to Thomas and Mary Foster, who continued to develop the garden, which was bequeathed to the City of Honolulu in 1930.

The first director, Dr. Harold Lyon, then introduced thousands of trees and plants and started its famous orchid collection. Today the garden has fourteen acres of plants from various parts of the world - but also native Hawaiian plants. It has about a hundred trees of 'exceptional significance', either for their size or rarity or origin.

 

 

Owing to their geographic isolation (3,000 km from the nearest continent), the Hawaiian Islands have developed a unique eco-system over their short history, geologically speaking (between half a million to five million years for the main islands). Which means the islands have a unique flora and fauna. However, it is today difficult to distinguish between endemic and introduced species, the latter having spread all over the islands. Introduced species started with the arrival of the first human settlements around 1,400 years ago. It is to be expected to find a variety of plants from various parts of the world in a botanical garden, and the Foster garden is no exception.

 

Let's start with some interesting trees: the first one is a baobab, originating mainly from Madagascar. Several large specimens can be found in various parks (but not in private gardens due to their size) in Hawaii, as they can make spectacular trunks with nothing growing on them and then the foliage appears only at the top. You can tell the size of the trunk of this one by looking at the size of the label on it, seen on the other photo. You can also get an idea of the height of that tree by the size of the trunk.

 

 

Another giant is the quipo (or cuipo or macondo), from South America. It has the softest wood of all trees and is bare eleven months out of twelve. Its roots are a source of water for those trekking in the forests where it grows. The trunk size of that tree was almost the same as the baobab shown above.

The Nile tulip tree can grow up to 85 meters, and has spectacular flowers, often orange, and is frequently grown as an ornamental in Hawaii. It's always a pleasant surprise to see such colors on top of large trees because at that height we usually only see green foliage:

 

 

Another tree with showy flowers is the Poinciana (called Ohai Ali'i in Hawaiian, also 'Flamboyant') from the bean family. It is endangered in its native habitat (Madagascar) but is widely cultivated as an ornamental:

 



 

How about a tree that grows cannon balls? It bears that name due to its globe-shaped fruit that grow along the trunk. They are edible, and the flowers they come from are fragrant. For that reason, and because of its unusual fruit, it is grown as an ornamental.

 

 

The tree above, 'breadfruit', could apparently save the world from hunger if it were more widespread. It is a staple food for many societies. The baked fruit has a 'potato-like flavor similar to freshly baked bread', hence its name.

Garden visitors can also see specimens of : arrow poison tree, a be-still tree (poisonous), a bottle palm tree (bottle-shaped trunk), a carnauba wax palm tree (this wax is used in automobile waxes, shoe polish, dental floss), kola nut tree (used in beverages due to its caffeine), fig trees, gold trees (which actually grow tiny particles of gold and other minerals on their leaves), kukui and macadamia trees (with edible nuts and oils of many uses), lettuce tree, elephant ear tree (thus named due to the spape of its pods), silk cotton tree and teak tree.



The garden has an orchid conservatory, and some varieties are shown below. (I apologize to orchid lovers for not taking down the name of each variety, but hopefully some of those might already be familiar to them.)

 

 

The garden has a section on economic plants (spices, herbs, dyes), where I found a totally different type of creeping thyme (t. serpyllum) than the one we are familiar with here on the island, but the leaves did smell like thyme though. Then there was the other thyme (t. vulgaris) used as a culinary and medicinal herb, but this one was also different - much taller:

 

 

In that same section one can find the Buddha's Hand (or Fingered Citron), a small tree whose fruit is very fragrant and for that reason is used in China and Japan for perfuming rooms and clothing. It is also edible and used as a religious offering:

 

 



Other notable flowers include the spider lily, frequently grown as an ornamental due to its fragrant white flowers (below) at the end of a long stem, which are easily cut to make bouquets. The following photo shows a tiny visitor (gold dust day gecko) among the leaves. Geckos are useful as they eat cockroaches, and for that reason some people tolerate them in their houses. (That cute species is also the mascot of the GEICO insurance company, a successful marketing move.)

 

 

Bromeliads are a very large family (more than 3,000 species) including the pineapple and Spanish moss (the smallest of the family). They are favored as an ornamental because of their foliage, which often grows as a rosette with different shades of red, green and/or gold:

 

 

There is also a community garden at the Foster Botanical Garden. Here are some photos from that garden:



 



 

The next article of the Gardens of the World series will feature the Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden, also part of the botanical gardens administered by the City and County of Honolulu.

 

(article and photos by Denise Motard)