HAWAI'I GARDENS
New book a must for lovers of Hawai'i's ferns
By Heidi Bornhorst
A long-awaited fern book has finally hit the book shelves.
"Hawai'i's Ferns and Fern Allies" by Dr. Daniel Palmer is a must for anyone who loves these plants and wants to know more about them.ÊThis is a very scholarly work, published by UH Press, and well researched in the wild as well as in herbariums and libraries. (Herbariums are where dried plant specimens are stored and studied.)
Palmer has studied the ferns of Hawai'i for over 30 years. He has learned from experts in the field.
I have had the good fortune to be with Dan out in the field, hiking and studying ferns and other native Hawaiian plants, many times. He has long been a caretaker of our forest resources and a student of Hawaiian plants, although his profession before retirement was dermatology.
The cover of the book is gorgeous, with a nice ama'uma'u fern, complete with its skirt of dried golden fronds, growing on fresh lava. There are excellent line drawings that accompany each fern.
The names are very well researched with all synonyms listed. (Ferns have long confounded and confused taxonomists, especially here in Hawai'i.) Palmer also goes into some depth about Hawaiian names, uses, hula and lei uses and so on. His explanation of how the Latin names are applied and what they mean is interesting. There are good pictures and an illustrated glossary in the back to help understand fern terminology and descriptions.
One interesting thing about Hawaiian ferns is that 114 of the species, or 71 percent of our native ferns, are endemic — unique to Hawai'i and found naturally nowhere else. This is the highest rate of endemism of any fern flora in the world.
One example of an endemic fern is Elaphoglossum crassifolim, also known as hoe a Maui (Maui's paddle) or 'ekaha.It is fairly common today in moist forests.
Weedy ferns such as Salvinia molesta, which is in the news lately for smothering Lake Wilson, are included in this book. Palmer calls S. molesta a "noxious floating fern of fresh or stagnant water." It was first noted in Hawai'i at Hawaii Tropical Garden in Hilo and found in April 1999 to be rapidly spreading on Enchanted lake (Ka'elepulu Pond) in Kailua and Lake Wilson in central O'ahu.
On a related issue, here's a great Web site for native Hawaiian plants and weeds: www.hear.org/starr/hiplants/index.html. Kim and Forest Star work on Maui perpetuating native plants and educating people about and controlling weeds. They have a gorgeous site full of pictures of cherished native plants as well as weeds. The images are awesome and educational. I found this to be a great accompaniment to Dan Palmer's fern book.I could look up the ferns from his book and see them in glorious color, in the habitat. They generously gave me permission to share the site with our gardening readers.
What's in bloom
It seems a bit early for gold trees, plumeria, mountain apples and ku'uipo, but there they are — in bloom, and in fruit already in the case of mountain apple. (This plant that we love to eat in summer, brought here by Polynesian canoe, has already fruited in Nu'uanu and Kane'ohe. No, we don't have global warming!
Ku'uipo vine, with its cheerful orange blossoms, is in good time for Valentines Day. This is a great vein for its beauty and ability to disguise ugly wire and chain-link fences, cloak unseemly views and cheer us all up. As vines go, ku'uipo is tame and not aggressive as some weedy wild, tropical liana type vines are.
Mangoes are in bloom; now we need for winds to remain light so the trees set fruit. Here's to a good mango season! Remember to feed your favorite garden columnist with luscious mangoes this year.
Happy Valentines Day! Remember, plants and flowers are great gifts for your ku'uipo on any occasion. And chocolate comes from plants too!
Heidi Bornhorst is a sustainable landscape consultant. She has retired from Honolulu's botanical gardens and now volunteers there.
