Brighamia insignis

Brighamia insignis (Campanulaceae family) is one of the rare and unique endemic plants native to Kauai. Today I had an opportunity to assist pollinating some specimens at the National Tropical Botanical Garden.

Mature plants look a little like cabbage growing at the top of a long branchless trunk that's fat at the bottom and tapering up.

We began by inventorying the plants they have in the nursery which is fewer than a hundred and of these perhaps two or three dozen were flowering. Of those flowering, we only had a few distinct genetic lines to work with, of which only one type was from the wild. The flowers function as male or female at different times and manage not to self-pollinate.

The idea was to cross the plants as much as possible in hopes of getting more viable offspring. Only a few plants were providing pollen so that was the limiting factor. This closeup of the process (remarkably clear for a cell phone shot) shows the pollen being applied to the sticky center of the flower. We managed to do five different crosses to a couple of specimens each. All the plants we were working with came from the Napali coast.

This will be an ongoing process as there are lots more flowering specimens still developing. We also need to learn what time of day (and other factors) will be most conducive for success.

It will be interesting to see if these attempts produce seed and then how those plantings do. If we are lucky perhaps these unusual plants can be grown out and reintroduced in the wild.

Na Aina Kai

This morning we visited the Na Aina Kai garden for the basic guided stroll.
 The 1.5 hour tour actually took a little over two hours (but the guide politely asked in advance if anyone had time constraints) and was a nice small group of eight. We saw an impressive variety of tropical plants plus other garden features, numerous bronze statues, water features, rock work, a maze, and so forth. The bronzes are all life-sized vignettes usually of nostalgic scenes featuring people rendered in a quite life-like style. The plants are almost all introduced with only a few native species. In addition to the gardens we saw a large planting of hardwood trees, including teak and mahogany.

The garden is now operated by a non-profit but was originally the estate of a wealthy couple who spent their retirement doing increasingly ambitious projects there. The wife who designed most features of the garden survives and sometimes gives tours (Tuesday mornings I believe).

The guide mentioned many other things to see that we would need to take other tours for. They offer a number of tours featuring different parts of the very extensive grounds, light walking to hiking or ride in a cart.

Directions: from Lihue/Kapaa, after mile post 21 take the first right on Wailapa and follow the road to the end, turning right into the parking lot. Call ahead to reserve a tour to ensure there is space or show up and take your chances. Tours start in the visitor center where there is a gift shop as well.

Piheo trail to Alakai Swamp to Kilohana Overlook

Yesterday I did one of my favorite hikes to the Kilohana Overlook (as I have detailed here previously). This is a classic and involves some trepidation (some mud to get through) and risk (the view at the end is often obscured by mist) but is always well worth it, in my opinion even if you don't get the view. Memorably the first time out there with my son we encountered total white-out that never cleared. Fortunately I am considerably more weather-savvy here now.

Weather

While there is no telling with the weather here, especially up at Koke'e, here is some guidance to up the odds for seeing the view of Hanalei when you hike out there.

• Check weather forecast for both north shore and mountains - you want it to be clear and sunny in both.
• If rain is predicted, especially anything about heavy rain, I suggest another hike.
• That said, almost never will it be ideal and it doesn't have to be. Even "partly sunny" (better, "mostly sunny") you have a good chance.
• Don't let the rain percentage discourage you. Yesterday is was "50% chance of rain" and not a drop fell on me. When they say "50%" it means half the time somewhere in the mountains some rain my fall - actually not a very useful statistic at all, and not the chances of rain falling on you.
• The mists in the Wainiha valley come and go quickly. Often offshore winds sweep up the valley and you can see the mist rolling up and over the ridge. And when it clears away the blue ocean and Hanalei Bay emerge from the white right before your eyes.

If you get out there and have a view at all, start enjoying it or shooting photos immediately, don't wait as it might disappear after you finish your sandwich. If you see a bunch of mist, take a break and keep an eye out for it to clear. Of course if it's dark and dreary, and no wind is blowing, it might just be the wrong day. I would say as long as it isn't darkly overcast and you see movement in the mist there is a good chance it will clear if you wait 20 or 30 minutes.

Mud

People used to go out here before the boardwalks were put in, amazingly. Even with this modern convenience there is some mud to be negotiated to do this hike. Ideally, go on a clear day when it has not rained in past few days, but at any time I expect there will be some mud to deal with on this one.

Within the first mile you will have some muddy spots to either go around (or through if you like getting dirty) but it gets tricky when the trail gets steep. Most of the messy part is between mile 1 and mile 2. Usually there are some rocks and roots to provide solid ground and tree branches that serve as handholds.

Footwear that you don't mind getting wet and dirty is essential. Good grip is too important as you will need traction at times. The mud will tend to adhere to the soles so you can even slip on dry places, too.

I have found that proceeding very slowly it isn't a problem but you have to take your time, step by step. Also don't be shy about getting your hands dirty (bring a rag to clean up) and with good handholds it isn't hard scrambling up slopes when necessary. Hiking poles (or just one when you are grabbing on) provide great added stability and can be used to test the depth of mud before stepping into it. Remember the steep parts are going to be even trickier coming back down so don't get in over your head. Kaua'i red dirt is pretty powerful at staining so be forewarned it might not all come out.

For details and directions see my previous post on this hike.

• 8.5 miles round trip
• allow 2 to 3 hours each way
• trailhead at end of 550 in Koke'e

Nualolo Kai

Saturday we were very fortunate to ride along on an expedition to Nualolo Kai [map]. Access to the public is restricted so it was a real treat to be able to spend the whole day there and get a guided tour by knowledgeable scientists David & Lida Burney of the Makauwaki cave reserve who were leading the group.

We left Kikiaola harbor at the crack of dawn and had a remarkably smooth ride over with ideal sea conditions and got a quick tour of the nearby sea caves before landing. There's no dock so you deep-wade to come ashore.

Nualolo Kai is perhaps half mile of shore line along the Na Pali coast of western Kaua'i with continuously curving sheer cliffs backing it up and virtually isolating it from access other than by sea. When inhabited by native people there was access via a ladder and path system to go around Alapi'i point providing access into the neighboring Nualolo Aina valley. All traces of the ladder are now gone and we confirmed by walking out over the rocks that the rocky point is completely impassible today. They say it was intimidating to the uninitiated even using the ladder which took you up the cliff overhang (steeper than 90 degrees angle) and then to get around the point you had individual footholds in bare rock at a considerable height to negotiate. The picture above shows Alapi'i point as seen from about the center of the run of shore, with the reef line clearly visible demarked by waves breaking over it.

The cliff on that side actually overhang and provided natural protection from the elements so this is where many people lived in ancient times. In the photo at left you can see a series of large flat areas going up the hill hugging the cliffside that are thought to be sites for living quarters. This is the location of one of the largest archeological digs in Hawaii by the Bishop Museum and the Smithsonian that date these sites going back approximately 700 years or more. Dr Burney mentioned a proposal to have the artifacts from this location exhibited in a traveling tour to finish up in a new permanent display on this island of their origin (currently everything is on Oahu or in D.C.).

Nualolo Kai dramatically shows the geological history of the island. The entire Na Pali coast is the remains of volcanic action millions of years ago, long since ended with the island slowly eroding and collapsing back into the sea. This view shows an unmissable "X" in the cliff that is believed to result from two lava dikes - cracks formed in the settling rock filled with lava that solidified to seal them cleanly. Apparently one diagonal crack formed first, sealed, and then the other opened up at a angle to the first and in turn was sealed that just happened to be of about the same dimensions.

It doesn't take long to notice that there is an inordinate predominance of noni throughout the best arable land above the beach, other than scrub brush and weeds. I know the ancient Hawaiians brought noni here and grew it, but there's no reason to have this much of it since it is more of a medicine than a food per se - in fact I think is fair to say that it smells and tastes awful (it smells like a very strong cheese, oddly enough). Turns out we have the goats to thank for all the noni - goats amazingly descend these cliffs to forage here and this is one of the few plants toxic to them so by consuming everything else they have effectively promoted noni exclusively here. We saw a herd of perhaps fifty goats moving along the near-vertical cliffs when we hiked up for the view (the top photo) scrambling up the accumulated loose rubble that climbs steeply toward the cliff base.

Not far from the house sites is a complex of rock walls that are the remains of an ancient heiau (temple).  This heiau is unique in these islands in that it built into the concavity of a natural depression that features a natural spring - usually these rock structures would be built up on a prominent high point. The spring is not covered over to discourage the goats from visiting here - it's about the only source of fresh water around. By the way, the coconut stumps just right of center were planted in modern times (what were they thinking?) and then had to be cut down when the roots threatened to disrupt the foundations of all the surrounding rock work.

After lunch and a short nap we went snorkeling well inside the reef and saw plenty of fish in the shallow waters. This is a popular place for commercial operators to bring visitors in for a snorkel but we found a time when we had it to ourselves.

The boats were back in time for our return trip and we flew back without much headwind and fairly smooth water all the way, past Miloliʻi, past Polihale, past PMRF, past Kekaha, back to the harbor before sunset.

Hala

Today I helped clean up under the hala in the Allerton Garden where there is a collection on the west side of the river, not far from the beach. Hala is the Hawaiian name for this plant (at right) also known as Pandanus, Pu hala, Screw Pine, a member of the Pandanaceae family. The collection includes a number of different species collected from various places around the world; actually the one pictured here is not the native hala but close enough. 

Hala is easy to spot by the distinctive pineapple-like fruit, round segmented branches, and the round support roots that spread out around the base. Long sword-shaped leaves spiral out around the ends of the branches, and those leaves wither and drop as the plant grows (something like how palm fronds drop off the growing trunk of the tree). Raking and hauling those fallen leaves was this morning's work.

Raking the leaves into big piles is fairly quick but it's loading them and hauling them to the dump that takes time. In the picture of the truck you can see a pile behind the read end of the truck about to be loaded. Those long leaves have rows of little teeth-like thorns along the edges near the base (on most varieties) that scratch you when you are grabbing them for loading. Since the leaves are tough and sinewy they take a lot of room piled in the truck and it takes several loads, tying a tarp on the top to keep everything in place.

I knew that you can't eat the fruit but learned today that the nodules of the fruit were used by native people as brushes. I found one on the ground - there were thousands of them - and peeling the outside skin away sure enough it looks exactly like a paint brush. And the base is surprisingly easy to hold and feels like it would be great to paint with.

Today the river that runs through the garden was noticeably high on the banks. On a break I walked down to the beach to see why. As the photo below shows, the mouth of the river was completely blocked by beach sand. And the river was going to have to go a little higher before it was going to spill over into the ocean. We have had a high surf advisory this week and waves and ocean surge must have pushed sand up the beach blocking the river mouth. (The area where we were cleaning up the hala would be on the left side of the river from the perspective of this shot - facing north, up river, from the Lawai-Kai beach - perhaps 200 yards behind the center of the footbridge.

I have probably worked twenty or thirty days in the Allerton and seen many parts of the garden, but each time I go I find something new it seems. Most of the work is on the east side of the river but today we were west side. I took a different road walking back from the beach and off to the side of the road was a little path I hadn't noticed before leading further west - another area to explore another day.

Back in the Garden

Things worked out such that I had a free day and though it was across the island I knew that I wanted to go back to work in the Allerton garden. During my winter stay on the island, or everything I did, volunteering to work alongside the garden staff became part of my routine (I settled into working Monday, Wednesday, Friday in the gardens) and was perhaps the most rewarding of all the things I did.

Today I showed up for work and was greeted warmly by the whole staff and it felt just like going back to where I belong. To be clear, as much as I like this work, for now at least, I won't be working as much as before - I'm working on getting set up permanently and want to explore a number of new prospects. However, when I do settle into a routine I can easily see a day or two a week working here as a fixture of whatever life here turns out to be.

The work for today was clearing out a bunch of hau that had overgrown a former dirt road obscuring it and making it completely impassible. They said this happens routinely and quickly - they did this job perhaps a year or so ago. Obviously this is a minor road used just for staff access to this part of the garden, on the west side of the river back from the part of the shore featured in Pirates of the Carribean #4.

Hau (Hibiscus tiliaceus) a fast growing tree in the mallow family. It is a tall woody plant, good at spreading, that creates a large tangle. The wood is very soft but fibrous - it reminded me a bit of the wood disposable chopsticks are made of. On the left is a closeup of the cut wood and the back of the worm-eaten leaves. I should have taken a nice photo of the plant but after hacking at it and hauling it to the dump all day long I was not thinking of the aesthetics of it but more considering it my adversary.

Above you can see the loaded truck filled with the trimmings - at least seven or eight truckloads were hauled out and dumped. We used chain saws for the heavy cutting, but also cane knife (at right). With a little practice I was impressed with what the cane knife can do. You use the weight of the knife to do the work, and cut the branch at an angle for best effect, on the sloped part of the blade. The cut shown in closeup above is of a fairly thick branch (two or three inches across), made with three angle cuts, and the center bit just breaks off.

It was good to see all my friends in the garden again, and I brought a Sugarloaf pineapple to share with them. It was also like a good workout at the gym - cutting, lifting, loading - but in a very beautiful setting without the sound of the waves on the wonderful Lawai-kai beach just down the road. The day went from overcast and rainy in the morning to humid and then clear, sunny, and hot by the afternoon, eventually with a cool breeze giving respite from the blazing tropical sun.

Back home by about four for my afternoon ocean swim. Only in Kauai.

Tropical Gardening 101

The Allerton Garden parking lot (not public)

Having done a good number of hours helping the garden staff with the upkeep of the Allerton and McBryde gardens, I think I have a small degree of competency and have learned a lot that I wanted to put down here. This will likely only be of any interest to gardeners and may be very elementary for serious gardeners.

The photo to the right is the parking lot. When volunteering in the garden one gets to drive down via the service entrance from the mauka side above the valley - this is a completely different facility from the visitor's center in Poipu by the Spouting Horn for tours. (I learned the difference my first day showing up at the wrong place then driving several miles around to the right office.) This arrangement keeps the workers activities out of the way of the tours, important because both approach roads are mostly single lane. Driving "to work" each day is quick mini-tour of the gardens and a treat to begin and end the work day.

The first rule I learned would be not to try and do it all. Work is focused on a specific area and to do specific tasks only. We do pick up the odd branch or something that fell into a path but only if it is quick or a major problem. At first I would try to do extra things "while I was there" and of course this derailed me from the task at hand. This place is so big and the staff is only a few people so everyday is spent doing the next thing that can't wait.

Imagining the work I would do I envisioned myself nurturing the plant collection here, but in fact the work is completely different. Mostly I kill plants: weeding. Or cut back overzealous plants: sometimes even native plants can become nuisances in the wrong part of the garden. Then we spend a lot of time raking up, picking up, pulling down, hauling and loading all the junk we extract into the compost heap. There are a couple of places they dump the detritus, one in a very scenic location overlooking the garden on the west side at the end of a former cane field rail line that winds uphill and through two tunnels: it could be a Disneyland ride except for the enormous pile of garden waste at the end of the ride.

Weeding reminds me of the other important work rule I have discovered: be sure you are weeding weeds. After a day of experience I was about to pull out a scraggly random weed (breaking the aforementioned rule by doing extra stuff in my idle time) when I asked the gardener, just in case. Turns out that "weed" was an endangered native plant that you could count the number left alive on your fingers. Fortunately I asked before yanking it out. It should have been tagged but wasn't.

Here's a recent example of a form of weeding: rescuing trees from vine crawlers. Philodendrons in this case  were encroaching on all the trees in this area along the ditch running between the Thanksgiving Room and up above the Diana Room. On the left you can see in the darker "V" shaped tree on the left leaves a few feet up the tree, or all around the base of the tree in front. On the right you can see all that is pruned back; what you don't see is the buckets of plant material cut and hauled away, two loads worth.

Before

After

Mark's Garden

Yesterday I worked in the part of the McBryde garden that Mark (gardener) takes care of. Working on the hale I got to know more of the garden staff, and from the beginning I was interested in checking out other parts of the very extensive gardens in Lawai. It was a great day, perhaps the most productive I've had working there, and Mark is a veritable fount of knowledge about flora.

You can see all of this (without having to do any work) on the McBryde tour.

For a quick description of some of the botanical families mentioned below, see the NTBG site. I know enough not to pretend to attempt summarizing myself.

Mark has been working at the garden for nearly twenty years and is responsible for the part of the McBryde garden down the valley near the nursery and the Allerton. This area includes a small orchard of tropical fruit trees in the open grassy part of the valley west of the road, a beautiful hillside down to the stream, and a rock stair loop walk through a lush alcove on the east side of the valley.

In the morning we cleaned up the walkway and hillside west of the stream. I learned about Marantaceae which are distinguished by having petioles at the end of the stem connecting to the base of the leaves. Things had been unattended for a few weeks due to the hale construction, including gathering and preparing materials before the actual work of building started, so there are a lot to do and I think we pulled three cart-loads of waste out of there.

Before lunch we scouted the orchard for trimming work but the tree that needed work had already started to flower so we weren't about to touch them. I got to taste soursop that had fallen to the ground. It looks like a prickly pear: just as Mark described it, much like Jolly Rancher [TM] sour apple candy in a spongey flesh with plenty of black seeds in each compartment of the flesh.

After lunch we work on the walk across the stream where they have quite a collection of (botanical families) Zingiberales (including ginger and bananas) and Rubiaceae (which includes the coffee plant). Passing fronts dumped rain on us a few times - one time we had to huddle under trees because tourists had jumped into the cart - but we made good progress on about half of the area. 

I worked much of the time cleaning out the Heliconia (which look a lot like banana trees). Once they flower and the flower dries up the whole plant needs to be taken out. (I did not bring my camera but will be sure to next time, soon I hope.)

Makauwahi Cave Reserve

The NTBG volunteers got a special tour of the Makauwahi Cave Reserve [cavereserve.org] last Tuesday, another beautiful sunny day on the south shore. Located just east of Poipu near the shore area known as Mahaulepu. To get there, drive to the Poipu Hyatt and keep going on the dirt road, turn right at the CJM Stables sign, bear right at the fork, and park near the stables (unless you want to brave the tough-looking dirt road to the left into the reserve proper).

Panorama below shows both the north (left) and south (right) cave entrances from the sinkhole, almost 360. Scroll way to the right to see the full image...

Dr. Burney who runs the place with support from the NTBG where he serves as director of conservation showed us around. The site centers around a cave just inland on the south shore that turns out to be an ideal repository of fossils preserving the history of the island. Long ago the center of the cave ceiling collapsed leaving a sinkhole with north and south cave portions opening onto the central open area. In addition to its scientific significance, the site was used for a number of scenes in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

You enter through a low natural portal into the north cave, a large room well lit from the sinkhole it opens onto. Along the west wall is one of the active digging sites, currently filled with water, where Dr. Burney digs down layer by layer through thousands of years of sediment, painstakingly piecing together the biological and geological history of the site.

On the opposite side of the sinkhole opening is the south cave whose main room is of comparable size. However, the south cave has several passages leading deeper into an extensive gallery of more caves for spelunkers to explore, i.e. not practical to casually wander around in by any means. The farther recesses include some burial sites and the deepest darkest parts are home to rare cave-adapted animals, completely white and eyeless.

Dr. Burney has been transforming the surrounding terrain replanting native plants long ago crowded out by invasive human-introduced species, using his diggings to inform what plants and animals originally thrived in this spot hundreds or thousands of years ago.

Beyond the cave area, areas of the adjacent abandoned sugar cane fields have been planted with original native plants in a broader effort to demonstrate that it is possible to restore natural areas to their former composition. Forsaking chemical spraying, weed control is an essential challenge in this effort and they have adopted a unique solution: tortoises. The restored plant areas are fenced into sections expertly weeded on a continual basis by eleven (and counting) tortoises, who work long hours for free weeding and fertilize the plants for no extra charge.

Of course there is plenty of human support needed to keep up a garden of the scale of many acres, and for what the tortoises can't manage they hire workers from the neighboring island of Ni'ihau (where there is 100% unemployment since the island is for residences only and the last place Hawaiian is spoken as a first language).

All in all it's a wonderful success story. Much accurate scientific knowledge has been and continues to be gleaned from diggings and research here, including updating our best estimates of first human settlement of the island (to be more recent than earlier thought) to 800-1000 A.D. Large scale replanting with native species has been demonstrated and the terrain continues to morph into what it was before those troublesome humans showed up. Perhaps soon the last plant extinctions on Kauai will be followed by a resurgence toward larger scale restoration of native species toward building a more diverse and robust environment.

Allerton garden

Tuesday I toured the Allerton garden, where I have been working, on the guided tour as a guest. By coincidence the tour guide was Frank, the same guy we had in February last visit.

The Allerton is unique as a somewhat formal garden with statuary and some structures in a tropical setting. Organized as "rooms" partitioned by greenery, it's much like walking through a museum.

For now let me put up some photos and work on a proper writeup of the garden. The Allerton is a wonderful place, as you can see, at the end of the rainbow. Highly recommended, even if you don't like garden tours particularly.

Lawai beach as seen approaching the Allerton

Morton Bay fig tree - famous for the Jurassic Park dinosaur eggs

Diana

Friday I trimmed philodendron on left.

One of many fountains throughout the garden

Mermaid

Water feature

The water feature above is quite remarkable in design, copied from just such a fountain Allerton saw in Italy at what is now the prime minister's residence. With just a gravity feed of water from above, each of the small chambers down the gently sloping line is separated by a mahogany wood dam at each of the narrow points that the water flows over. At the top (far end) the water flows smoothly ... about half way down it begins to oscillate ... and by the bottom the water is coming in waves pulsating about one per second over the last dam. Based on Allerton's description the garden staff cast this and they say it just worked first time.

Robert Allerton

Spending time in the garden that Robert Allerton created it occurred to me how rare it is that human artifice manages to enhance natural beauty: quite an achievement, especially in what was such a stunning setting to begin with. Here's a bit of the history of the garden that I learned; I'll be writing more about the Allerton for sure.

The property was originally owned by Queen Emma (wife of Kamehameha IV) with a house up above the valley in the flat lands. The McBryde family bought the property after the queen's death for $5000. The McBrydes farmed sugar in the fields surrounding the valley, who had Emma's house  moved down into the valley to make room for the cane fields.

The beach area is not hard to imagine the property as Allerton first saw it in 1938 by happenstance when he visited first Kauai. Thanks to his hotel in Honolulu being overbooked, their friend there suggested flying to Kauai and stay there -- surely there must have been accommodations elsewhere on Oahu! -- and the same friend just happened to suggest that they see beachfront property in Lawai. The previous owner Alexander McBryde was recently deceased and the Kauai innkeeper happened to be the executor of his estate. Quite an incredulous story, a smooth sell, or a remarkable serendipity.

Allerton was born into wealth, pursued an art career until abruptly deciding it was not to be, and stewarded Robert Allerton Park in Illinois featuring formal gardens and statuary he collected. Deaf since childhood, Robert was said to be "unique, eccentric, and marvelously gifted in all the arts." He was also notably for many years the wealthiest bachelor in the United States. Robert was already in a relationship with John Gregg when they first saw Lawai-Kai as they named it, and the garden and buildings are very much a collaboration with John who he legally adopted as his son later in life when Illinois law allowed it.

Allerton died in his nineties peacefully in the garden and John lived there many years after until his death there as well. Both of their ashes were scattered in the waters off the beach of the garden they loved so much and gave to the world.

Source:

Robert Allerton : the private man and the public gifts

Author: 

Burgin, Martha.

Holtz, Maureen.

Holtz, Michael.

ISBN: 

9780979842078

Publication Information: 

Champaign, IL : The News-Gazette, c2009.

Day in the Life

Today was a very nice and also typical day in the emerging pattern of my daily life here in Kauai.

Awoke before daybreak (not due to cocks crowing though I did hear them) and got up, checked email, did yoga, and departed before 7am in early light for Kalaheo.

Breakfast at the Kalaheo Cafe -- veggie omelet with hash-browns and cornbread muffin, two cups coffee. A tourist just arrived on the island asked me where to see the sunrise (the sun was already up).

Drove down to the NTBG -- the south side visitor center is in Poipu near Spouting Horn, but the garden administration, research, and support buildings are in Kalaheo and there is a back entrance to the same gardens from there at the back of the Lawai Valley. Stopped by the volunteer office to check in, commiserate about their attempts to use Facebook (which I couldn't help with at all), and buy a volunteer T-shirt.

Proceeded down into the garden first to see the hale (traditional Hawaiian structure) currently under construction in the rear of the valley. I am hoping to be able to volunteer helping with the remaining construction tentatively planned for late this month.

Found George and got going weeding a section of the Allerton garden. The Allerton is a fabulous garden -- I'll write all about it after I get a tour (gratis to volunteers) next week. Today I was weeding a relatively modest section [map] of the garden where a collection of fruit trees were. One tree was tagged as a Black Apple which I had never heard of -- it was still small and not yet bearing fruit. My job was to pull weeds, primarily a white flowered vine, from the grassy area around the trees. The ground here is quite rocky so they can't mow it as they do a similar section nearby, hence, hand weeding is needed. To get the vines out by the root requires tracing them down through the thick grass to the ground and then yanking it the crown which is usually firmly attached to a chunk of lava gravel.

In a full day I got about 1/5 of this large area (above, right) weeded, but enough that it shows. The panoramic below is shot standing where I was weeding showing the road that runs around the fruit orchard. None of these pictures even begins to do justice to the Allerton: this was the set for Jurassic Park and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 movies.

Had lunch with George and learned a bit about the gardening work to keep the Allerton going. They are done to six (from eleven) full timers now and are constantly overwhelmed with the workload, but they do a great job.

Bird in tree right where I was working.

After lunch, George took me on a short private tour all the way out to the beach where Allerton's house is situated and showed me all the old structures such as the greenhouse, destroyed by hurricane Iniki over twenty years ago. Later I rode along to dump the weeds I had piled up -- we went across to the west side of the stream and up, through two tunnels to the garden waste dump (still unclear why it's so distant). The dump is at the furthest usable part of an old road that used to lead to sugar cane fields further down the coast. With disuse the road has become overgrown with bougainvillea beyond where we dumped the weeds. The spot overlooks the house and beach and has got to be the most exotic and scenic garden waste pile in the world.

On the way back from the NTBG, I have made a habit of stopping by Kauai Brewing (the western-most micro-brewery in the USA) for a draft -- I like the Cane Fire Red.

Next in Hanapepe I picked up some Taro Ko chips -- purple sweet potato with li hing mui (salty dried plum) flavor. Stanley was low on product because their slicer is broken and until it's fixed they can't make more. They produce the chips right there in the little house-cum-factory. He always gives me an extra free bag when I buy there -- maybe he does for everyone?

Had fish tacos in Hanapepe at Paco's Tacos (OK, not great). Then back to Waimea to shower and change and go for an early evening walk along the beach after sunset. The ocean has been very calm the last couple of days with waves hardly a foot tall if that gently rocking up and down the dark sand.

Not a bad day at all.

Munroidendron racemosum (pokalakala)

Today at NTBG nursery I cleaned up a full table of plants -- weeding and organizing everything.
Unless you are very interested in rare tropical plants, gardening, etc. this may be exceedingly boring.

Started before 8am and finished about 3:30pm with a short lunch break. It was a not quite as repetitive as the fern cleanup, and thanks to some cloud cover the hot tropical sun was only full on for a couple of hours. A pair of ultra-light planes cruised overhead at least a couple of times. You can see exactly where I was working over at Google Maps (N 21.898677, W 159.502497).

The table held varieties of Munroidendron racemosum a.k.a. Polyscias racemosa or in Hawaiian pokalakala, an endangered plant that is endemic to Kauai. According to one source known specimens number in the hundreds. These were all young plants, just a few feet tall and none were flowering; grown trees can exceed twenty feet. Good thing I didn't know how rare these were at the time as they were a handful.
Fortunately, I managed not to damage any of them which was actually quite tricky. The plants are well established and tough, but range 2, 3, some 4 feet tall yet many are planted in tiny (3 or 4 inch) containers, so they are extremely "tippy". The plant is a long and slender round trunk with a bunch of thin branches of leaves developing toward the top. For some reason, the trunks tend not to grow straight but at odd twisted wavy bowed shapes which do not balance. Several were leaning against or bound to jury-rigged supporting twine tied between poles extending up from the table which I also repaired and rearranged as best I could. 

To stabilize a tray of plants was challenging. Packing the tray of 3 inch containers with a five-by-five array was a stable base, but the plants were bushy enough that it was a chaotic snarl of branches, and the branches had a way of entangling themselves that was difficult to separate. Fewer plants to the tray was much more workable, but then each plant's base was wobbly and when one would tip the domino effect would cause others to lean or fall over as well. The off-balance branches could be aligned to lean together to the center (getting tangled) or turned to reach out away from the tray (entangling the next tray) -- nothing really seemed to work so I ended up with a little of all these techniques.

Some plants were identified by a numbered metal tag -- a six digit code for the species with a three digit unique number for each specimen. The majority just had plastic tags stuck in the container as are seen in commercial nurseries listing just the six digit number and name. I ordered the plants on the table in numerical order while weeding each pot. Given the unstable plants and support twine traipsing over the table it was quite a process shifting everything around into order.

It's good doing work totally unlike one's "real work" and while this isn't a "fun" job, at the end of the day the value of the effort is certainly clear. Since the roots of these plants are exposed and entangled with the weed roots this was all done by hand: no tools allowed. 

One thing I'm curious about is why so much variation in the weeds -- some containers were solid weeds, others a few, and some had virtually no weeds. Same plants, potting, and other conditions. Actually, many of the weed-infested plants were easy to do -- just pulling out the tops the roots and everything came cleanly out. The really time-consuming ones were where there were many tiny weeds just sprouting, pairs of pinhead-sized leaves covering the exposed earth that had to be nipped out one by one.

Microlepia strigosa var. strigosa

Today I volunteered at the NTBG McBryde garden nursery, cleaning out the overgrown ferns (palapalai in Hawaiian, a.k.a. Microlepia strigosa var. strigosa). I don't know if intentional, but this is a great job for a beginner as the live plants are extremely hardy so it's hard to do much damage.

The gardens are very exotic and beautiful and the nursery is home to all kinds of strange and unusual plants (though the ferns I worked on are quite common).  The nursery includes a hot house, and cold (slightly cooler) house, a mist room, shade and sun areas.

These small ornate feathery ferns are used extensively as ground cover in the Limahuli garden so the nursery is always producing lots of it. Working from 8am to 3:30pm (when they closed) with another volunteer we almost got through three tables or approximately 500 containers. There was a lot of variance in the effort to do one container: about half we fast (half a minute) but many took more time, probably the ones that had gone the longest. A few were so overgrown there was hardly any new growth at all in them. Counting the trays of 25 completed in the time I was there it works out to about two minutes each: I guess time flies when you are having fun.

Each container held a clump of plants in various stages of life: my job was to pull out the old dead stalks to make way for new growth, along with cleaning out any rubbish that had accumulated or, rarely, weeds. In the nursery everything is grown on crushed lava rock gravel (not in dirt) in an effort to avoid soil bacteria infections. Ferns of course bind tenaciously to the rock base and hold it in a tight mass usually. Any fern more than half shriveled went -- while many dead ones broke loose easily so required more effort or in some cases cutting with pruning shears.

One nice practice at the nursery is that all tools are cleaned and disinfected without water with each use. The pruning shears I used were in great condition to show for it. Here's the procedure:

1. Brush off any loose dirt.
2. Spray the tool with alcohol mist.
3. Scrub with a rough sponge.
4. Wipe off alcohol with a clean rage.
5. Lightly spray with WD-40.

Palapalai is indigenous to Hawaii but can grow aggressively; last week at Limahuli I was ripping the stuff out of a rock walled garden feature it had taken over. I expect when I close my eyes to go to sleep I will see clumps of fern after a good seven hours.

Limahuli Gardening II

This morning I worked in the Limahuli Garden again, an excellent volunteer activity I recommend. (Also see earlier post, Limahuli Gardening.) Today there were three other volunteers and under the direction of gardener Nicole we cleaned out some rock-enclosed sections of the upper garden that had for years been overgrown with ferns.

Before

After

 

In two mornings at the garden now I have almost entirely been working to kill (unwanted) plants, but that just shows that you don't need a "green thumb" to volunteer there. The ferns we removed were a native species but so aggressive that they needed to be excised. It made a huge difference: for the first time you could see the outlines of the rock enclosures clearly. Now that these areas are visible, the garden staff will figure out what to do with them: leave them as is, plant them out, or something else. Nicole had a great idea of planting with native grasses, but in any case now they can make an informed decision. We removed a bunch of overgrown grass from the rock-enclosed area on the left and down over the embankment (out of view of these shots), again revealing the terrain so they can figure out what to do there.

Surprisingly, the garden has very little in the way of utensils and supplies, for such a lavish collection of plans. We did not have rakes, or tarps to carry the ripped out plant material. Later I helped Nicole re-stake some plants that had been blown over in this weeks winds and we had to scavenge previously used gardening tape strips, never material not being available. Assuming I can regularly work in the south shore garden I may buy a few things and attempt to donate them so we have decent equipment to work with.

Hole in the Mountain Farm

UPDATE: Now you can buy it online.

Several months ago I ordered Sugarloaf Pineapples from the Hole in the Mountain farm. Today I was fortunate to get to visit the farm and meet the farmers, Jude and Paul, and see their spread. They grow Sugarloaf Pineapples (and no other pineapples, "that other stuff" as Jude refers to the pineapple you know), rambutan, longan, mango, and have some plumeria as well.

Jude has an encyclopedic knowledge of pineapple and told me all about its lifecycle and the challenges of growing them, in particular, getting them to ripen steadily year round. Below you can see some of the developing stages of the plant (I won't attempt to repeat the detailed lecture I heard).

Sugarloaf pineapple is something special: sweet, low acid, nearly white colored, and very tender not fibrous, you can eat the core. It's a real treat, worth going out of the way for. However, it does make it hard to appreciate regular pineapple once you have had Sugarloaf.

More on Kauai pineapple here.

Flora

Without commentary I wanted to put up some images of the local flora (hit Slideshow button for easy viewing) I have been shooting. These are mostly from the Alakai Swamp hike shot macro with the Canon DSLR. The ferns here are especially elegant and constitute perhaps half of the images. During my time here I should get to know the names of the common plants seen on the trail.