Flowers scarce for graduation lei

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

If you've been trying to buy lei this week for a high-school graduation ceremony, you may already know this: There's a shortage of good flowers.

At Rudy's Flowers, Sue Ogawa had a supply of vandas to string into lei yesterday. But dendrobium, another locally grown orchid, has been in short supply. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

But here's the surprise. You can blame the weather and not the usual demands of the season.

"It's the weather," said Dora Mahiai, a partner in Na Pua Mahiai, a flower wholesaler and grower in Wa'ianae.

"Plumeria doesn't like a lot of rain and we have been getting a lot of rain. And they like sunshine and we haven't had a lot of that."

Normally, her trees produce about 10,000 to 25,000 blossoms a day starting in March and running through September, said Mahiai, who supplies a lot of plumeria to greeters.

"This year I was lucky if I came up with 5,000 a day," she said.

Production is turning around after two weeks of gorgeous weather, although that won't help her stock of crown flower, which was gobbled up by monarch butterfly caterpillars "that came early and stayed late."

And her beleaguered tuberose supplier — the only one on the island — "can't supply everybody."

"From March to July, most of the flower people try to make their money," Mahiai said.

"The weather has not been nice, so a lot of us will be struggling come September."

At City Florist, Alice Umeda said the pikake supplier told the shop not to take any more orders for graduation week. Umeda was startled by the request. But there should be enough pikake for the earlier orders, even on a week with more than 20 high-school graduations.

"The buds are there but they are not blooming," she said. "I don't know what's wrong. Orchids, I have. And ginger is not too bad — so-so. But pikake is very short."

Karen Lee, manager at Cindy's Lei & Flower Shoppe on Maunakea Street, also has noticed the shortage, but only within her own business. She said the problem is one of bad timing, given the time of year.

"There are a lot of flowers but I think a lot of flowers are poor," Lee said. "Not every flower is usable. There is a lot of waste."

With sunny skies dominating the past week, it's hard for customers to understand that the weather has caused problems, said Terry Oshiro, manager of Rudy's Flowers.

"They think: 'Bad weather? What?' " she said.

With a lack of tuberose — and its distinctive fragrance — graduations may smell, well, different.

The thought of it gave Oshiro a fit of laughter.

"Maybe we will spray them," she said. "We have to find something else but it is hard to beat those ones, the smelly ones."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.