Posted on: Friday, August 23, 2002
HAWAI'I GARDENS
Hawaiian cotton needs a helping hand from us
By Heidi Bornhorst
Advertiser Garden Columnist
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| The ma'o shrub is a vanishing member of the hibiscus family. |
Ma'o, or Hawaiian cotton, is a beautiful member of the hibiscus family, Malvaceae. The golden hibiscus-like blossoms of ma'o are a cheerful sight in the summer garden.
The flowers are complimented by the silvery tinged, kukui- or maple-shaped leaves. The seeds of ma'o are not like white fluffy cotton balls, but small and brown, fuzzy with short hairs. You can easily grow ma'o from seeds.
Not all that long ago, ma'o shrubs dotted the land on O'ahu's Ka'iwi coast. If you were to drive or hike between Sandy Beach and Makapu'u, you would be rewarded with many ma'o in bloom.
I drove that route the other evening, and auwe! Not a single ma'o. What happened to them all? Fires and weeds and off-road vehicles – in short, humans! Hawaiian plants like ma'o die in fires (cigarette butts, a backfire from a dirt bike, etc.). Weedy grasses (which burn fast and hot in the next fire) quickly grow where the ma'o did for centuries. So what can we do? We can clear away the weedy grasses and replant the area with dryland Hawaiian plants. And then we can nurture them and perpetuate them. Suitable plants for the area include 'ilima, 'a'ali'i, grasses like kawelu, 'aki 'aki and pili; hinahina, nehe, ko'oko'olau, nama, wiliwili, hala, naupaka, puakala, naio, nanea, 'ili'e'e, and many more can grow and thrive in this hot, dry, windy and salty area.
What a victory for all of us and for our future generations that Ka'iwi will be perpetuated in wild open space. Now can't you just picture it with thriving native plants? A group is forming to nurture the native Hawaiian plants of Ka'iwi. If you'd like to join and kokua, please let me know.
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Garden tip
You don't have to chop down your big mango tree if you can't reach the fruit. The same is true with other large trees. There are right and wrong ways to prune trees, and "topping" or "hat-racking" is a big no-no. It is ugly, bad for tree health, and in the end, forces the brutalized tree to grow excess foliage and weakly attached branches.
Have a professional arborist or certified tree worker trim your venerable mango tree, rather than whacking branches off in the middle (topping). This way you can keep the shade and keep the fruit of your mango in pickable range.
Another tip: wait till the cooler weather of fall to trim your trees. We need their shade in the hot dry summer.
Honolulu is nationally recognized as a "Tree City USA" and yet we see so many trees brutally and unreasonably cut. We see flowering trees cut at their peak of bloom and wonder why. A school in Kaimuki whacked its golden shower trees at the 10-foot level, straight across, just when they were full of luscious dripping golden summer blossoms. There were no power lines nearby, nothing to block but the brutal summer sun. Why?
We see trees that took years to grow, cut and toppled in a few hours. We need to better manage and nurture our valuable urban forests.
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In bloom
Mangoes are a true sign of the summer garden in Hawai'i. So beautiful and so 'ono. I am a mango fiend — I love to see big old trees dripping with luscious, delectable and always so aesthetic mangoes in fruit!
Heidi Bornhorst is director of Honolulu's botanical gardens. Submit questions to islandlife@honoluluadvertiser.com or Island Life, The Honolulu Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802. Letters submitted to The Advertiser may be published or distributed in print, electronic or other forms.
