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

Natural History

Poha
(Physalis peruviana)

Many people who grew up in the islands have memories of gathering wild poha, filling sacks with the cherry tomato look-alikes that came equipped with cream-colored parchment husks that looked like paper lanterns. The jams and jellies the aunties would cook up had a wild, sweet taste that lingered on the tongue. These days, the only place you're likely to find the jams and jellies are in fancy gift basket assortments.

The poha plant is native to Brazil but has spread throughout the world. Obviously, it wasn't only island people who liked the tangy fruit. It can be found growing wild in the hills of Sri Lanka and India as well as in the south of France. A perennial herb in the tropics, the plant grows as an annual in temperate regions. It has been grown commercially in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Poha has many names including Cape gooseberry, ground-cherry, husk tomato and strawberry tomato. It is called Cape gooseberry because it was cultivated extensively at the Cape of Good Hope in the early 19th century.

This cousin of tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and other solanums was naturalized in Hawaii before 1825. (One writer speculates it was introduced into Hawaii by the explorer Vancouver.) At one point it was one of the more common plants along roadsides and in clearings from 1,000 to 8,000 feet in elevation, according to botanist Otto Degener. (Other experts say it grows between 1,500 and 4,000 feet in elevation.)

Island cook Maile Yardley recalls when poha grew wild on all of the islands, sprouting in the fields and in kama'aina gardens. The fruits were an island favorite in jellies, jams, preserves and even pies and cookies. Yardley said, "If it hadn't been for the prized fruit, the nondescript bush might have been called a pest!" In modern times they are harder to find.

Marie McDonald says that the fruits in their husks were a favored material for the lei maker living at higher elevations. Parker Ranch cowboys liked to wear lei poha wrapped around the crowns of their hats. Each husk was peeled away from the fruit and gathered together at its base to form a kind of stem. Ferns were plaited with the fruits and formed into improvised hatbands.

The plant is about two feet tall with oval, velvety, heart-shaped leaves which measure about two or three inches long. After the little, yellow, bell-shaped flower drops its petals, each calyx forms a cream-colored papery sack that looks like a small paper lantern holding a small round fruit. The waxy, yellow-orange skin of the ripe fruits covers a spicy, juicy, tiny-seeded pulp. The unripe yellow-green fruits are quite bitter.

[ Top ]

Arts & Culture

Makawao Union Church

Looking like it should be a part of the English countryside in a Masterpiece Theatre episode, the Makawao Union Church charms everyone who sees it. It looks like an ancient stone church, but actually, it's "new." Work started on the building in 1916 (according to the cornerstone that is labeled with the precise year of construction). The building was dedicated on September 2, 1917.

Renowned architect C. W. Dickey was hired to design the state-of-the-art concrete building. Its walls are approximately one-foot-thick cast-in-lace concrete with steel reinforcements. Steel beams support the heavy slate roof. The windows and doors and the wall copings which would traditionally have been made of stone are framed with glazed terracotta panels. Local lava rock veneer was applied to the exterior to give it the timeless look, and the interior is clad with rift-sawn old-growth English oak.

The church is listed on the National Historic Registry. There's a bronze plaque on the grounds that says so.

The church actually was chartered on April 20, 1861 by Lot Kamehameha (the future King Kamehameha V) when he was still the Minister of the Interior. It was an outgrowth of religious meetings held by the Reverend Jonathan S. Green in his home at Pookela in Makawao in 1857. These services were held in English, rather than Hawaiian, for the benefit of the "foreigners" in the community.

The good Reverend arrived in Hawaii on March 30, 1828, with the third company of missionaries. His wife Theodosia accompanied him. In 1843, he
resigned from the service of the American Board because, he said, "the relations the Board sustains to American slavery are not right in the sight of God."

Green accepted an invitation from Hawaiians in Makawao to become their pastor. They could only provide a grass hut for him, but Father Green worked in the fields to support his ministry and, as a carpenter, helped the people establish the first self-supporting church in Hawaii. The stone building they erected at Pookela still stands.

After his wife's death in 1859, Green took a furlough for a year and a half. While he was away in the Mainland, the Reverend C. B. Andrews carried on Green's work.

Andrews had arrived in 1844 with the eleventh company of missionaries. He organized the girls' school which was the forerunner of Maunaolu College (now the home of the Job Corps and other social service agencies). He also applied and received the first charter for the "Makawao Church and Congregation" from Lot Kamehameha, cementing the long association between the church and the school.

When Green returned to Makawao with his second wife, Asenath in 1863, he went back to work as pastor of Pookela Church and the new "foreign" church.

The first Makawao Union church was built at the present site of the Makawao Cemetery. (Some of the earliest graves were in the church yard.) The building was dedicated on March 3, 1861 and was used until 1889. Around 1900 it was still standing.
In 1876, a second charter was applied for and granted. The name now was the "Foreign Religious Society of Makawao," in honor of the ministry for the "foreigners" in Makawao.

On March 10, 1889, a new frame building on the site of the defunct Paliuli Sugar Mill was dedicated as the new church for the Makawao congregation. Both the building site and the building was donated by Henry Perrine Baldwin as a fulfillment of a promise he had made to God.
The story is told how Baldwin, in partnership with his brother-in-law Samuel Alexander, had bought the former Bush Ranch at Sunnyside and converted it into a sugar cane plantation. All of their money plus everything they could borrow was invested in this enterprise.

Then there came a prolonged drought. Prospects looked grim. One day, when things were really desperate, Baldwin got off his horse and prayed for rain, offering his promise to return a portion of his earnings for God's work if the plantation was saved. The rains came.

As for the Paliuli Sugar Mill, which was built on the edge of Rainbow Gulch by Robert Hind, it was the site where on March 28, 1876 Baldwin had an accident that resulted in the loss of his right arm. He was testing the clearance between the mill rollers when his fingers were caught and his right arm was drawn into the mill. He was nearly killed before the engine could be reversed.

Shortly afterward, when he was just recovering from the amputation, Baldwin made his famous climb down the rope at Maliko Gulch. At the time the partners were busy building a ditch to bring East Maui water to cane growing in the Central Maui plains. Everything depended on their finishing the project on time . The workers who were building the ditch were intimidated by the steepness of the gulch and refused to make the climb down the rope...until they saw their boss negotiating that rope with one arm. He did it every day, until that Gulch was crossed.

In any case, the church has many ties to the Baldwin family. After Henry P. Baldwin died, his heirs erected a new church in his memory to replace the old frame building that was becoming dilapidated. By September 2, 1917, the new stone building was ready to be dedicated. The name was officially "Makawao Union Church."

The new building was about the same size as the original church building. Like that church it was built on the original Paliuli Mill foundation. Many of the stained glass windows were taken out of the old church and re-installed in the new church along with several additional windows.

An earthquake in 1938 damaged the Paia Community House, an outbuilding on the church grounds that was in almost continuous use from the early 1900s by various groups for the presentation of school graduations, concerts, operettas, lectures, plays, and dances. The earthquake shook the Paia Community House right off its foundation, and it had to be torn down. However, the church building right next door sustained very little damage.

When the stone church was dedicated, Henry P. Baldwin's oldest son -- also named Henry -- said, "...it is our hope that this church will always be a potent factor for good and a blessing to Makawao and Maui."

[ Top ]

Braddah-Nics Lexicon
 

STANDARD: You are not very communicative today.
BRADDAH-NICS: 'Smattah you? Lose your mout' o' wat?

* * * * * * * *

STANDARD: Promises, promises.....
BRADDAH-NICS: Eh! No jus' talk!

* * * * * * * *

STANDARD: It's time for bed now.
BRADDAH-NICS: Go moemoe a'ready!

[ Top ]

Local Grinds

Steamed Beef Hash
 

Ingredients:

Procedure:

Put ingredients in a large bowl and mix. Evenly place mixture into a 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…

Kaupo

Kaupo Gap is a deep and rugged valley with the only lowlands on the section of coast between Kipahulu and Ulupalakua. The village of Kaupo is around the 35-mile marker and is mostly not in evidence. Basically, this is a community of paniolos, many of them third-generation Kaupo Ranch hands.

Kaupo Ranch is one of the largest private land holdings in East Maui and is located about two miles up the slope from the Kaupo Store. Citrus was cultivated on the hillsides in the early 1900s but the venture failed, mostly because it was hard to get the fruit to market from the isolated district. Cattle ranching is the main economic activity these days.

Kaupo used to be a heavily settled area, they say. Numerous fishing villages were scattered throughout the area. The district has 30 recorded heiau. Loaloa Heiau is the largest, a very ancient heiau said to have been built by the menehune, and it was one of the first sites in East Maui to be registered as a National Historic Landmark.

In 1730, Maui's King Kekaulike built Popoiwi heiau, a pu'uhonua (place of refuge) in Kaupo. This refuge sits close to Huialoha Church, a restored Congregational church which was built in 1859 near the shoreline just east of Kaupo Gap, on the rocky black-sand Mokulau Beach. The area was an ancient surfing site and is named "many small islands" for the rocks offshore. The church was restored in 1978.

Numerous churches, many of them mere shells, dot the landscape, marking the locations where the settlements once existed. Some of the churches used abandoned Hawaiian heiau as foundations.

In earlier times, the Hawaiians gathered salt from the depressions in the boulders at Nuu Bay. More than 50 ancient Hawaiian petroglyphs have been recorded in the area. The bay was also a landing, where the cattle were taken by ship to market in Honolulu. In 1997, Nuu Pond, a small pond that sits behind the cobble beach at Nuu Bay, was fenced in to keep cattle out of the area. Sightings of native birds, including the Hawaiian stilts and coots increased.

The scenery is stark and rugged. Most of it is cattle country. Past the Kaupo Store the road is unpaved and rutted for three miles. Even when there is paving, until Keokea the road is narrow, bumpy and full of potholes.

Between Kaupo and Keokea, there are traces of a very large village called Kahikinui, which is now in ruins. The Dept. of Hawaiian Home Lands has 22,000 acres in the area, making it one of the major land owners in Kahikinui. Homestead development in the area for native Hawaiians is in progress through a new kuleana program that allows homesteaders to occupy the land and build before extensive infrastructure is in place.

Through Kahikinui, the road generally follows the old Hoapili Highway, an upland trail built in the 19th century. The road continues west through wide open dry areas with patches of native wiliwili trees and other introduced species. The majority of the plants in this area are thorny and tough. They are the only plants that can survive the arid conditions and the depredations of the cattle and the large wild goat herds. The road has a panoramic view of the rolling hillsides and open cattle range above La Perouse Bay.

It is said that "in the old days," you could walk from Kahikinui to Makawao and never once leave the shade of the trees. This was probably before the lava flows in the late 1700s cut a wide swath through the dryland forests of the district, and before the days of the sandalwood trade, when the chiefs ordered their people up into the mountains to harvest the iliahi, sandalwood, for which there was a great demand in China. The chiefs kept their people in the mountains so much that the work the people needed to do to feed their own families was disrupted, and the people retaliated by uprooting the new sprouting trees so the forest died more quickly...so they could get back to their own lives.

This was also before the free-ranging wild cattle released in the hills in the 1790s caused extensive damage to plant life, denuding the mountain side and changing the wind and rain patterns.

At one time, there was a sizeable Hawaiian population in Ulupalakua and Kahikinui, supported by extensive cultivation of dryland taro and sweet potato, supplemented by coastal fishing. Now it is mostly an arid land below the cloud belt. The cattle are still there.
 

[ Top ]