So many plants and buyers — it's a jungle in there
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
Ani Pang rolled a crowded crate of anthurium, fern and jasmine plants through the Neal Blaisdell Center parking garage to her friend's pickup truck yesterday after a shopping spree at the Lyon Arboretum's spring sale.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
"I'm not really a plant enthusiast," Pang said. "I mostly kill them off."
Exotic selections at the Lyon Arboretum's spring sale included starter plants of newly developed varieties of heliconia.
To replace the dead, she and her friend, Carole Koike, focused their attention on anthurium, which Koike said were low-maintenance.
Other shoppers liked anthurium but appeared to have strong inclinations toward just about every other plant capable of growing indoors or out in Hawai'i. Shortly after noon, three hours into the annual sale with two hours remaining, the supplies of every plant from orchids to oregano were greatly reduced.
Shoppers lugged herbs, fruit trees, cacti and native shrubs from the exhibition hall to the parking lot in quantities that made the sidewalks look like moving jungles.
"You should have seen this place this morning," said Richard Palmer, a specialist in native forest plants who serves as an arboretum volunteer.
He was standing at one end of exhibition hall's massive interior, looking over the rows upon rows of tables.
"There were so many plants on each of these tables, you couldn't see the tables," he said.
That was before the 9 a.m. start time — before the doors opened and shoppers who had lined the sidewalks clear to King Street were allowed inside. "By 9:30, we had 1,500 people in here," he said.
By noon, more than 3,000 had come through the door. Nearly a thousand more would cross the threshold before the sale ended at 2 p.m.
Ray Baker, coordinator for the event, said the sale was the second best in the Lyon Arboretum's history. In addition to the spring sale, the arboretum holds a late-summer sale at the Blaisdell and a holiday sale at the arboretum in Manoa Valley. Sales figures were not yet available yesterday.
More than 35 nurseries participated.
Nellie Sugii, a botanist who propagates endangered species from specimens brought in by field scientists, said sales of such plants were going well. She grew them from seeds produced in the greenhouse.
She took a few moments off from her specialty to help co-worker Diana Tusher, who runs the gift shop at the arboretum, to select larger, hardier plants for her back yard on Tantalus.
"I'm repairing pig damage," Tusher said.
Jan McEwen, a horticulturist from the University of Hawai'i, staffed the "Plant Doctor" booth, answering questions about whatever the customers wanted to know.
She said the most frequently asked question was: Why isn't my litchi producing fruit?
The answer: Litchi trees require cool winter temperatures, and our recent winters have been warm.
Her most unusual question of the day: Do watermelon explode to spread their seeds?
No, she said. They don't.
