Hawai'i Gardens
Shade-tolerant 'Fire Flash' fine new foliage plant

By Heidi Bornhorst

Finding a plant that does well in the shady parts of your garden or in your house or office is not always easy. You may be bored with the same old, same old plants that you always see.

You might want something new and interesting that can also hang in the shade, brighten your office and clean and filter the air, or brighten up your home decor theme.

I saw one of these "new" plants the other day and just had to have one, even though it was in fact just a new version of an old familiar plant, Chlorphytum comosum, the spider plant.

I am currently testing it in my office to see how it will tolerate those tough conditions — my office goes dark, hot and cold, sometimes has dry air-conditioned air and offers no bright real light and inconsistent amounts of water (or coffee or tea).

So far its doing well and I really like its looks. Frankie Sekiya, the fruit specialist who brought it in, has a lot of positive things to say about it, too. It is one of the most popular new plants to hit the Florida house and shade plant market in years.

This new plant is a close relative of an old and extremely tough favorite: the spider plant (also C. comosum). Spider plants are hard to kill, send out lots of keiki on runners (thus the common name) and are also a very powerful air-purifying plant, as proved by NASA research.

This air-purifying component is not something to overlook. Plants growing in homes and offices do much to keep us healthy. There are lots of toxic chemicals in offices, especially new ones. New carpet and furniture, copying machines, computers and such all give off harmful and toxic vapors (you can smell some of them, especially when you move into a new office, or visit an unfamiliar office).

Living, growing plants can help convert these toxic compounds into simple compounds and the toxins are stored in the plants. Spider plants are particularly good at removing formaldehyde and carbon monoxide. So please don't think of plants as "furniture." Think of them as a beautiful connection to the natural world and as natural air enhances.

This new spider plant relative, known as "Fire Flash," is considered by nursery owners to be one of the best new foliage plants. It should be just as efficient in enhancing your atmosphere.

It is also attractive. It has wide leaves, with a bright orange highlight on the leaf base.

The orange is very striking and goes well with other interior plants that come in shades of green and blue.

A nice combination is white Spathiphyllum, green golden pothos, blue ginger and the new Chlorphytum species.

Often with new plants, there are only a few, and you'd think they were made out of gold. This is not the case here.

Frankie Sekiya and Lynn Tsuruda have hundreds of them and they will be offering them for sale at next weekend's Foster Botanical Garden sale.

Besides the Fire Flash, the plant sale will once again feature new and remarkable plants from specialty growers and private collections. Among them: miniature tiare Tahiti a.k.a. pua Samoa (Tahitian gardenia); Nishii pine (Diamond Head plants); Chinese herb Yunnan ba yau from Wong's nursery; golden duranta and hybrid hibiscus from C. Nii nursery; adeniums and pachypodiums from Perla Alvarez; dwarf Singapore plumeria from R & S Nii Nursery; Cattleya "Hillary Rodham Clinton" from Ahuimanu Orchids; Caladium humboltii from Elsie's Plants & Things.

Caladiums are a shade-loving house plant, a taro relative called kalo kalakoa — "colorful-leaf taro — here in Hawai'i. Also for sale: fragrant tropical rhododendrons, including "Felicities," a very fragrant white flower, and "Dr. Sleumer," a very fragrant pink and white blossom; a new fragrant Hedychium ginger, bred in Japan, "Akatsuki," raised by Waimea Arboretum, with peach and white flowers; new Tabebuia "Caribe Queen" (gold tree and tecoma relative) with reddish flowers, which will bloom profusely, even in a container; Adenium or desert rose, a plumeria relative with a wide range of color forms, including the rare white flowering one; and the hybrid Thailand "crown of thorns" — these hybrids of Euphorbia millii have been widely admired and coveted, in front of the orchid display at Foster Garden.

In the area of edibles, they'll have sweet potato "Margarita" — not only does this plant produce 'ono 'uala (sweet potatoes), it is a very nice, chartreuse-leaved ground cover that grows thick and full, to 18 inches high. You can see this in the Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden courtyard, where it really enhances and highlights the other plantings, as well as keeps out the weeds.

The sale will also feature some kalo (taro) cultivars: " 'uahi a Pele," with smoky purplish foliage and stems; " 'elepaio" with large mottled green and white leaves; "Kumu" with red stems and green foliage and some new an unusual fruit trees: sapote (Matisia cordata) from Ecuador with fruit that has a sweet pulp and good texture; Mammea americana "Waimanalo," great cultivar of the mammee apple, from the University of Hawai'i's Waimanalo experimental farm; the dwarf wi tree, a shrubby small tree which fruits throughout the year and the new "Moujean tea" plant from the Bahamas, with citrusy fragrant flowers and foliage and from which you can make a tea with a hint of vanilla.

You can buy a lunch from Simply 'Ono lunch wagon and picnic under the shade.

Heidi Bornhorst is director of Honolulu's five botanical gardens. Her column appears here weekly; writer her c/o Island Life, The Honolulu Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802. E-mail islandlife@honoluluadvertiser.com or fax 525-8055.