BOOKMARK
Stop and eye the protea, the bloom of the bizarre

"Proteas in Hawai'i" by Paul Wood, photographs by Ron Dahlquist; Island Heritage, oversize paper, $12.99

By Wanda Adams
Advertiser Books Editor

Paul Wood makes a good point in this well-written and gorgeously illustrated book: That proteas have become a bit ho-hum to Islanders who have seen them proliferate in the past 20 years. It takes a visitor's eye to remind us of the bizarre beauty of these flowers, which flourish on farms in the cool, higher elevations of Maui and the Big Island.

Wood, a Maui writer who once was a horticulturist and nurseryman, here places the protea in its botanical context (the family Proteaceae, which managed to propagate itself in the widely separated locations of South Africa, South America and Australia, a botanical mystery) and explains the protea's inside-out approach to flower-making (tiny petals, big pistils; a seeming single bloom that's actually a "committee" of flowers). And here's a bit of trivia: The proper pronunciation is PRO-tee-ah, not pro-TAY-ah.

Wood suggests that you're missing the fun if you know only enough about protea to react with a startled "huh?" when you see one, and sets out to give readers a vocabulary with which to describe — and appreciate — them.