Gardens of the World : Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden, Kaneohe, Hawaii

The Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden is a fairly large (400 acres) and recent (1982) garden established by the US Army Corps of Engineers in Kaneohe as flood protection for that town of about 35,000 people. Kaneohe is part of the City and County of Honolulu on the east shore of the island of Oahu, and is home to a large Marine Corps Base. 

Because of that role as flood protection, the garden includes a large pond whose water is retained by an earth dam, and which attracts various fish and birds, including the endangered Hawaiian coot (photo below). This garden is also a recreation area with various activities such as catch and release fishing, picnicking and camping.

Several collections of plants native to various tropical and subtropical regions of the world can be found there. The trees are still small in most part due to the fairly recent development of the garden. Here are some notable plants found there, first some flowers:

Heliconias (also called lobster claws or false bird-of-paradise) are a family of plants belonging to the order of 'zingiberales', which includes ginger, banana, cardamom and turmeric. With their long hanging spikes of brightly colored and delicately shaped flowers, heliconias are cultivated all over tropical and subtropical parts of the world as ornamentals and for the flower trade. The flowers are an important food source for forest hummingbirds.

The white shrub flower below, Princess or Lady of the Night, is fragrant and from Puerto Rico, and is available from nurseries as an ornamental. The plant is part of the potato family:

Another white flower that MUST be shown here is the plumeria, native to Mexico, Central and South America, but so ubiquitous in Hawaii that it would be easy to believe that they are endemic there. In the Pacific Islands the flowers are used to make leis but also to indicate the relationship status of a woman when worn in her hair, depending on which side (available if on the right, taken if on the left). Due to their fragrance the flowers are also used in perfumery (soaps, incense, etc.)

Switching to orange flowers, here's the Colville's Glory, a tree from the bean family and native from Madagascar. Those trees display large clusters of showy flowers and are used as ornamentals for that reason:

 

And the pods are quite pretty too:

The flowers above are called 'naupaka' in Hawaiian. Eight species are endemic to Hawaii. A closer look (by clicking on the photo) will show the flowers as if they were cut in half. There are legends around why this flower grows this way, one being that 'a woman tears the flower in half after a quarrel with her lover. The gods, angered, turn all naupaka flowers into half flowers and the two lovers remained separated while the man is destined to search in vain for another whole flower.^'

The kukui or candlenut tree (flowers below with a fruit and leaves) has a long history of economic importance to several civilizations, including Hawaii, and because of this it is the tree state. One of those uses is for kukui nut oil. (When hiking on forest trails in Hawaii one can often walk on beds of fallen kukui nuts.)

Now for some interesting fruit - figs are a delicious fruit for humans, but they're also an important food source for many birds and mammals. There are more than 800 species of fig trees, some of which can grow more than 20 m. Here's one below:

 
Gardenia flowers, for those who can grow them in our climate, are very fragrant and a joy to see. During my visit to the Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden though, the gardenias were no longer in bloom. Instead, grapefruit-size fruits were adorning the bushes of this Transvaal gardenia (above).

Nature provides a diversified array of defenses to plants to protect them from unwanted predators. Among those there's the spiny palm tree, of which several species exist (below):

Another palm tree with an interesting trunk pattern is the talipot palm tree (from India and Sri Lanka), where the palm stems cross each other around the trunk:

The tree below - a white paperback or cajeput tree (from Australia and New Guinea) is shown for a very specific reason. 

This was the last tree I noticed at the end of my visit & for some reason I decided to tear off a small piece of bark as it seemed to detach easily. The bark piece that was coming off was larger than anticipated, but it's what I found beneath that quickly changed my mind:

For more information on that arthropod please click here. The visible part of that centipede is about the length of my hand (no exaggeration!), and we can see about two-thirds of it, based on the number of leg pairs. The head is hidden. Since then I have not touched ANY tree bark in Hawaii....
On a lighter note, here's the Hawaiian coot mentioned above, a bird of the hen family (as can be seen from its legs) but which is also a good swimmer:

(article and photos by Denise Motard)