[ Natural History ] [ Arts & Culture ]
[ Braddah-Nics ] [ Local Grinds ] [ Spotlight On ]

Natural History

Silversword
(Agyroxiphium macrocephalum)

Silversword, with its symmetrical, inwardly-curving reflective, woolly leaves arranged in a huge, perfect rosette, are exclusive to Hawaii and is normally linked today to Haleakala. However, in 1930 naturalist Otto Degener listed five distinct kinds of Agyroxiphium, including the Haleakala silversword, the Hawaii silversword (growing on the slopes of Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea and Hualalai, above 7,000 feet), the Eke silversword growing on Mount Eke, as well as two kinds of rare greenswords (silversword relatives adapted to lower, wetter, and less exposed conditions) that grows in Halekala's Ko'olau Gap and on the northern sides of the summits of Mount Eke and on Puu Kukui.

Says Degener, "The Haleakala silversword, when young, is a beautiful silvery sphere of incurved, linear leaves. The plant owes its color to a dense covering of hair which...repels some of the penetrating rays of the sun. This protection seems desirable, as sunlight is more intense at high elevations than at low. The hair also guards the plant from too rapid loss of moisture by evaporation through its leaves."

When the plants reach a diameter of about two feet, it shoots up a large cluster of flowering heads on a stalk that is three to six feet high. It may take the plant twenty years or more to reach a diameter large enough to send up flowers.

The heads bear small yellowish daisy-like disks with vivid purplish rays. (Some say that the silversword may have started out as a seed from the daisy-like California tarweed that hitched a ride to the island on the wing of a bird. In any case, the silversword is supposed to be a distant relative of the common sunflower. Its flowers lend credence to the theory.) After the plant flowers, it withers and dies.

Hawaiians call the silversword plants 'ahinahina or pohinahina, as they do other plants that look silver. No researchers have found any common use of the plants in the Hawaiian culture, perhaps because they grew in such hard-to-reach, inhospitable places, high up on the volcanoes.

In the late 1800's the Haleakala silversword was common within the crater and on its rim. World-traveler Isabella Bird Bishop was entranced with the plants: "...in a hollow of the mountain, not far from the ragged edge of the crater, then filled up with billows of cloud, we came upon...thousands of silversword, their cold, frosted gleam making the hillside look like winter or moonlight....They exactly resemble the finest work in frosted silver, the curve of their globular mass of leaves is perfect, and one thinks of them rather as...for an imperial table...than as anything organic."

The plants were so plentiful that people had no qualms about using them for play or as decoration. There's at least one description of homegrown "fireworks" made by setting large uprooted silversword plants on fire at night and tumbling them down over cliffs into the sea to the delight of watching crowds on the beach. Turn-of-the-century tourists would uproot the largest plants just to watch them roll down the slopes like giant snowballs or they would collect the leaves to decorate a hat. Explorers often made fires using the dried leaves to keep themselves warm.

An old wedding picture taken somewhere near the summit in the 1890's shows a group of Hawaiians wearing lei made from the leaves of the plants. In 1911 and for a few years afterwards, the leaves were gathered and used to decorate floats representing Maui in Honolulu Floral Parades. As late as 1915, thousands of the plants were gathered, dried and shipped off to the Orient to be made into ornaments. One enterprising soul even advertised specimens for sale nationally through the "Popular Science Monthly."

Besides thoughtless destruction by humans the plants also faced depredations from heavy grazing and trampling by the feral goats and cattle that roamed through the area. At least six kinds of newly introduced insects targeted the plants as well, among them, a leaf hopper, a kind of moth and a gray fly. By 1921, when the Haleakala National Park opened, the plants were getting sparse.



Says Degener, "Where a garden of silversword ten acres in extent was growing in the 1890's, not one plant could be found in 1927." By 1927, according to him, barely 100 silversword plants could be found in the crater.

In the years since then, through the efforts of the Park rangers and scientists, the plants have been making a comeback. Fences, stone walls and stiff fines go a long way to protect these unique plants.

[ Top ]

Arts & Culture

Honua'ula, The Red Earth

Honua'ula, "The Red Earth," is the Maui district that includes some of the most heavily developed land in South Maui (Wailea and Makena) as well as some of the most desolate (Kanaio). It lies to the leeward side of the 10,000 foot-high Haleakala, running in a wedge shaped flare from the mountain top down to the sea. Included in the district are Ulupalakua, Makena, and La Perouse Bay. It is a many-storied land.
The area is very dry, receiving an annual rainfall of about 15 inches or so.

Before the lavish golf courses, hotels and condo complexes, the area was the back of beyond. The rutted, bumpy red dirt road was lined with lava rock walls built to keep the cattle from wandering onto it. Behind the walls grew a tangle of tough weeds, kiawe trees (a native of Peru related to the mesquite tree of the American Southwest) and the prickly pear cacti called panini by Hawaiians.

There are no running streams, although there are three famous sweet-water springs located in the district, which are supposed to have been dug by the famous water-seeking gods Kane and Kanaloa. Wherever these companion gods went in their travels in Hawaii, if they came to a place that had no drinking water, Kane would thrust his walking stick into the ground and water would gush out.

Pele, the volcano goddess, also walked the land. The area around the bay between Keone'o'io and Lae o Papaka is black with lava flows. The most recent flow occurred around 1750 or so, they say. (It was still relatively new when the French explorer La Perouse landed there in 1780.) The flow, it is said, is the result of Pele's anger at a man for rejecting her advances.

At La Perouse Bay, (also known as Keone'o'io), as Inez Ashdown tells it, there once lived a handsome man named Paea. The goddess Pele was on Maui looking for her philandering husband Lohi'au, As she passed through the district, she noticed Paea and iImmediately, she assumed the form of a gorgeous woman. Her attempt to seduce the young man failed.

Paea remained true to his love Kalua and after making polite but firm excuses he hurried away. He went to find Kalua and together the two mortals fled towards Keone'o'io where he kept his canoe. The lovers did not survive the wrath of the spurned goddess, unfortunately. Pele tracked them down and caught up with Paea near Pu'u Mahoe, an old cinder cone in Ulupalakua. His head and torso still remains above the road which leads from Ulupalakua to Kanaio village. The rest of his body is next to the fish ponds at La Perouse. Kalua became a ridge where Pele caught her at Puu Na'io, midway between Pu'u Mahoe and the bay.

Mo'o, mythical water lizards, are supposed to make Honua'ula their home. The cinder cone between Oneloa and Makena, Pu'u Ola'i, has three mo'o names: Mo'oiki (small lizard), Mo'oloa (long lizard) and Mo'omuku (revered lizard).

There is a story about the battle between the fire-dwelling Pele and a water-dwelling mo'o woman Pu'uoinaina, who lived on Kahoolawe. They fought over Pele's husband Lohi'au and Pele won. She cut the mo'o in two, the tail end becoming the crater of Pu'u Ola'i and the head section becoming the offshore island of Molokini.

The district is said to have been named for one of companions of the 12th century chief Mo'ikeha. The chief and his brother Olopana sailed to Tahiti where they lived for some time until Mo'ikeha decided to return to Hawaii. The names of the companions differ in the various tales, but it is agreed that at various points, those who traveled with Mo'ikeha were permitted to land here and there as the fleet coasted along the island shores. (Some sources say Honua'ula landed in this district; others that he landed in Hana, where the Honua'ula heiau is located.)

Inez also says that the ancient trail that follows the beach from Lahaina to Hana, crossing Paea flow is "attributed to High Chief Ulumahe'ihe'i, who was called Governor Hoapili by Kamehameha the Great at Lahaina."

The great appeal of Honua'ula in ancient times was the coastal and offshore fishing grounds. The name Makena (abundant, numerous) may have referred to the fish. During spawning season from February to August, akule came into the bay at Makena. As the season approached, a fish spotter stationed at the top of Pu'u Ola'i would alert the community of fishermen who took off in their canoes with their nets.

The fishpond at Keoneo'io is supposed to have been built by a chief from Hawaii, Kauholanuimahu, who spent a great deal of time at Honua'ula. Apparently he married a Maui chiefess, Neula, whose family apparentlly lived in the area. Neula stayed on the Big Island, but her husband spent enough time at Keone'o'io to cause a wall of stones to be built that extended 200 feet across the channel. It was apparently damaged by a tidal wave and never rebuilt.

In 1776, when Kalaniopu'u and his chiefs from the Big Island invaded Maui and defeated Maui chief Kahekili's forces at Wailuku, their army landed at Keone'o'io. The double-hulled canoes landed at Keone'o'io and extended to Makena.

The land above Oneloa and Makena, on the slopes of Haleakala was formerly Torbert's Plantation. It was established in 1845 on land leased from Kamehameha III to grow sugar cane and potatoes to grow sugar cane and potatoes and rasie sheep, goats and cattle. Torbert also bought land for a road down to the landing at Makena from where he shipped his products to market.

Captain James Makee bought out Torbert in 1845 and turned the place into Rose Ranch. The plantation became one of the biggest and most expensive in the islands. Over 150,000 trees - mainly eucalyptus and pines - were planted for shad and as windbreaks. There was a mansion and cottages and a marvel of a flower garden with peacocks roaming the grounds as well as the latest in sugar cane mill technology.

In 1874, Kalakaua was welcomed at the ranch during his Royal Progress after his election as king. Four years later, drought conditions that kept worsening caused the sugar cane production to decline and by 1883, the mil shut down and the operation continued as a cattle ranch.

Today, Ulupalakua Ranch is world-renowned as a tourist stop with a winery that sells wines from grapes and pineapples grown on Maui.
The stories go on and on, as myth, legend and history intertwine.

[ Top ]

Braddah-Nics Lexicon

STANDARD: Russell, that is so foolish, I don't know what to say.
BRADDAH-NICS: Russell, 'as so babooze I no can handle!

* * * * * * * *

STANDARD: What a perfect illusion!
BRADDAH-NICS: Ja-like real, no?

* * * * * * * *

STANDARD: Oh, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to be in here.
BRADDAH-NICS: Whatchu tellin' me, I no belong here?
 
 

[ Top ]

Local Grinds

Steamed Beef Hash

Ingredients:

Procedure:

Mix ingredients in large bowl. Press mixture evenly into 9 inch glass pie plate. Cover with plastic
wrap and microwave at 70% power for 10 minutes.
Let stand 10 minutes before serving.
Makes 6 servings.

 [ Top ]

Spotlight On…

Lanai

Nine miles across 'Au'au Channel from west Maui, sits the oyster-shell shape of tiny Lanai. Formed by a single volcano rising to 3,370 feet, it is Hawaii's sixth largest island. Steep, eroded valleys fall away to the east from a central rolling tableland, where the island's only town perches, and to the west, high cliffs drop away to the sea.

The island is all orange-red dirt, and ancient lava, with traces of the remote Hawaiian past -- a large field of petroglyphs (pictographs etched in stone) as well as several smaller ones, temple sites, an awesome cliff once used as a testing ground for warriors who jumped off the edge into the sea, and the ruins of an old Hawaiian village -- still visible throughout the island.

The island is 13 miles wide and 18 miles long and most of its nearly 140 square miles is owned by Castle and Cook, the company that owns Dole Pineapple.

There is a lookout at Lanaihale summit above Lanai City, where you can see five of Hawaii's other islands -- every island except Kauai and Niihau. Along the Munro Trail, a jeep road and hiking trail that winds up through Norfolk pine forests planted by New Zealand naturalist George C. Munro, there is an overlook above Hauola Gulch, Lanai's deepest gorge, which drops 2,000 feet down to sea level on the island's east coast.
 

[ Top ]