Hawai'i Gardens

Colorful plants mark spring

By Heidi Bornhorst

You can tell it's spring by all the wonderful things bursting into bloom.

People who say we don't have seasons in Hawai'i need to walk outside and take a good look around. We needed rain and have been getting some, and the plants are responding in a most gorgeous manner.

All of the gold tree (Tabebuia) relatives have been putting on a great show: True gold trees drop all their leaves and become a mass of golden yellow blossoms, while golden and silver trumpet trees have bundles of flowers like little lanterns amidst their leaves. There are lavender trumpet trees and old-fashioned pink tecomas.

These trumpet trees were favorites of Harold Lyon, the first director of the Honolulu botanical gardens. He brought many from South and Central America, and they grow today as large trees in the Foster Botanical Garden. The offspring of these trees also can be found at many schools, in parks and along our streets.

Paul Chang, who worked at Foster Botanical Garden before moving to the Department of Education, planted many colors and forms of these gold and lavender and pink trees at our schools, where they still flourish and bloom splendidly today.

Many people love cherry blossom trees. They do well in cooler upland areas of the Islands, such as Waimea on the Big Island and Wahiawa on O'ahu. I saw a nice one in an upslope garden in Palolo the other day. Pink tecoma trees (Tabebuia pentaphylla) look almost like a cherry blossom tree with their blushing masses of flowers.

They thrive in Hawai'i's climate and usually always have a few blossoms, nestled amid the dark green leaves. At certain times, as in the spring, the tree puts out a mass of blossoms, giving a great cherry blossom-like show.

Plumerias come into bloom in late March and early April. The buds and flowers come out first on many varieties and the leaves follow a few weeks later. One friend said they look naked, but I love the look of the bare branches with lots of flowers on them.

Soon the shower trees — pink, golden and rainbow — will be in bloom. The rainbow shower is Honolulu's official street tree, and its blossoming is a sure sign of spring.

Many of these introduced flowering trees are perfect for hot Hawaiian summers. They flower early on bare branches and then have lots of leaves to shade a cool us in the summer. (This is opposed to native Hawaiian dryland trees like wiliwili, 'ohe makai and 'ohe 'ohe, which drop their leaves and then flower in summer.)

Mangoes are gorgeous in spring and tell of fruits to come with big red heads of new leaves (do we call them liko when the tree is native to India? — the new bright red and pink tender leaves sure look like classic liko to my eyes). The pink and cream flowers foretell a summer with luscious, juicy, 'ono fruit. You see these pretty mangoes in people's yards (if they haven't chopped them into unrecognizable stumps in the past year) but even more so in places where people used to live.

Big, old common mango trees can mark former house sites. Going up Likelike, in the back of Palolo and in other places where families once lived (back when common mangoes were the only variety around), you see big round heads of common mangoes making a gorgeous display.

Heidi Bornhorst is director of the city's botanical gardens — Foster, Lili'uokalani, Wahiawa, Koko Crater, Ho'omaluhia.