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Ti, Ki
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 Its name sounds exactly like “tea” (except in Hawaiian where, for lack of the “t” sound, it is pronounced “key”). But don’t associate this plant with hot herbal beverages. A friendly, happy plant that humans have always loved throughout the tropical Pacific, ti lends itself to dozens of uses. In old Hawai‘i, for example, ti was something you just had to have around the house, the lifestyle equivalent of scratch paper, pencils, string, and rubber bands—a handy item.
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Maui Nui Botanical Garden
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 Even in Hawaii, a garden is not always about flowers. “I wish I had a nickel for every tourist that came in and said, ‘Don’t you have anything with flowers?’ We are coastal and dry forest garden. That’s our thing.” So says the director of Maui Nui Botanical Garden, Hawai`i’s first such facility dedicated to native plants.
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'Öhi'a lehua - Metrosideros polymorpha
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 Remnants off the primordial Hawaiian forest still exist in remote mountain areas of the Islands. The true Hawaiian forest features an open canopy, full of space and light that allows for a diversity of life forms and many levels of understory. This botanical "Aloha spirit" of welcome derives largely from the 'öhi'a lehua — a native flowering tree that is surrounded by charming myths and legends, and that continues to have cultural importance for the Islands today.
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'A'ali'i
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 The Hawaiian name for this plant is easy to pronounce. Each vowel is stated separately: "ah-ah-lee-ee." At first glance, it may not seem like much: a sturdy green shrub with simple, willow-like leaves. And yet this indigenous Hawaiian plant cuts a heroic figure among the flora of the Islands.
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King Protea
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 In 1966 Dr. Phil Parvin, a horticultural specialist from University of California at Davis, came to Maui on vacation and recognized The Valley Isle as his "spiritual home."
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WiliWili
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This is a three-part story – first, of some sensational landscape trees that the Old Hawaiians used to make surfboards and outriggers. Second, it’s the story of a native Hawaiian plant that's tough as a rhinoceros (and just as endangered). Finally, this is the story of Hawai‘i's vulnerability...
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ANTHURIUM
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 Its name is a mouthful, but its beauty is compelling. Anthurium is a flower designed to get maximum attention. It seems Mother Nature turns mad inventor when she goes to work in dark crowded jungles. In the steamy thickness of South American rain forests, she hatched this eye-catching genus.
It's a heart on a stick. Or, to put it another way, a brilliantly colored flag mounted on a long smooth rod.
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Arranging Tropicals
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Fluffing some daisies in a vase is easy. Creating masterpieces from large, colorful tropical flowers can be daunting. Tropicals are sensational, but they're also strange, incongruous, and big—scary big. Anyone who would master the challenging art of arranging such glorious flora is well advised to learn from a master.
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Koa
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 The greatest technological invention of the ancient Hawaiians—the voyaging canoe—was made possible by the koa tree, a true native of the Hawaiian forest. When you consider that these canoes were hewn from single trunks, and that some of the old canoes were 150 feet long (or half the length of a football field), you can begin to imagine the god-like scale of the primeval Hawaiian forest.
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