Grow Aloha: Palapalai

Tori Kobayashi is the fern lab technician at the National Tropical Botanical Garden. She is responsible for propagating ferns from spores, many of which are rare or endangered. The goal is to cultivate these ferns until they are large enough for restoration projects and outplantings, contributing to the preservation and restoration of fern species.

But prior to her appointment as fern lab technician, Tori had previous experience with palapalai.

“I started dancing hula when I was seven, and I danced for around 13 or 14 years. Anyone who’s danced hula before is aware that not only are you learning and understanding and appreciating the story behind the song, but you’re also going through this process of entering a space and asking for permission, harvesting only what you need and doing it in the proper way. For hula I collected palapalai a lot. To see it out in nature just as it is and to recognize its beauty, it’s really brought in a new perspective for me being here in this position.”

“When you’re gathering palapalai or even just on the land in general you’re essentially stepping into someone else’s home. That’s something you always want to be respectful of and something you should view as a gift–not something you’re entitled to. So now that I’m here at this job, being able to appreciate a fern like palapalai that I collected a lot back then and to see it in a different light has been really special.”

In the lab, the ferns under Tori’s care are just starting their life cycle–many so small they can only be seen under a microscope. Although they appear tiny and fragile now, once established, these plants will grow to become remarkably resilient.

“It’s kind of crazy to know how vulnerable they are out in the wild and to see them and observe them in the lab. As delicate as they look, it’s amazing how resilient they can be and how–in the perfect conditions–they can just flourish.”

We asked Tori how it feels to see the ferns she’s cared for go back out into the world.

“The only thing I can think of is rewarding. Being able to sow my first tray and see the growth in it and being able to see sporophytes pop up after all this trial and error–to see them go from a spore all the way out to the cool room is very rewarding. And to see the ferns that are in there right now in the cool room, like the peʻahi fern, to see them go out into Limahuli and having it be in such a special place as that, is also extremely rewarding.”

Susan Fawcett is a postdoctoral researcher at the National Tropical Botanical Garden. Ferns are one of Susan’s passions and areas of expertise. In addition to her role at NTBG, she serves as the curator of ferns at UC Berkeley and holds a research botanist position at the University and Jepson Herbaria. We asked Susan what excites her the most about ferns.

“Oh it’s sort of an impossible question for me. It’s kind of an intangible thing. People tend to have this sort of green blur phenomenon where plants all tend to look alike, and they have a hard time seeing plants as individuals or as species. And ferns perhaps suffer even more from this phenomenon partly because they don’t have flowers, they don’t have fruit, and most of them aren’t very colorful. But I think the practice of getting to know them, of flipping over their fronds and examining the sori, seeing the scales, looking at them under a microscope and just getting to know them from that world, from that perspective of looking at them really closely and seeing how truly unique and diverse they are I think has helped me appreciate them.”

Hawaiʻi boasts a higher proportion of ferns compared to many other regions, largely due to our unique isolation and climatic conditions.

“Based on continental floras or floras of large land masses, the proportion of ferns in the flora of Hawaiʻi is much higher relatively, and that has a lot to do with dispersal. So if you think about an avocado or some sort of a giant fruit and how it’s going to travel across the world, how it’s going to survive in the ocean, it’s really challenging for things to arrive in the Hawaiian islands. Everything that’s gotten here has gotten here either being blown by the wind, carried by birds, or somehow on ocean current. It’s a long way off–2,000 miles–from the nearest largest land mass. Ferns are unique in having these really tiny propagules. Spores of ferns could be 50 micrometers long, very tiny, so they can blow on the wind or come on the wings of birds. If you look at oceanic islands that have been obliterated by volcanoes, one of the first plants to colonize those islands are ferns and it’s because their spores get around very easily.”

We asked Susan what her favorite fern memory is.

“One of the really exciting things about having Sarah Bryce here in horticulture is that she’s been incorporating some of the native ferns that have been coming out of the fern lab and the nursery into the Allerton Garden and McBryde Garden. It’s been really fun to walk around with her and with Dr. Ruth Aguraiuja and find places that we think native Hawaiian ferns will do well. I remember walking through the Allerton Garden and I looked in one of the canyon walls and there was this beautiful neke fern (Cyclosorus interruptus) that was just growing right out of the wall. I thought “wow that’s such a beautiful spot for that! I never would have thought to grow that there.” It’s kind of a wetland plant and it was thriving in this seep in the really steep walls in the lower part of the Allerton Garden. I was talking to Sarah and said “man I just love what you’re doing in the Allerton Garden, I love seeing the Cibotium there and all the new Asplenium and Cyrtomium, and it’s so cool to see that Cyclosorus growing out of the side of the wall, I never would have planted it there.” And she says “What? I didn’t plant that there!”

“So it was just really cool to see a native plant find its own special little place in the Allerton Garden. It made me really excited to bring more native ferns into the garden in places where I think they’ll thrive.”

Lastly, hear from Tressa Hoppe, a PhD student at the University of Hawaiʻi and a multidisciplinary artist. We asked Tressa about when they first recalled meeting palapalai.

“I think I’ve been aware of it for most of my life just because my family loves plants, we go hiking a lot. I’ve also been dancing hula since I was about six or seven, so almost 20 years now. I remember being in hula and dancing songs and hearing palapalai mentioned. I’d say the first really notable instance of me meeting palapalai was with my halau. We went hiking up in Waiʻanae Kai to go pick palapalai for lei. Most of the time we’d just make lāʻī or ti leaf lei because everybody has ti in their yard. But sometimes for special occasions we’d go and we’d pick palapalai. So we all hiked up together, up the Board of Water Supply road, up a ridge and down a gulch and up another ridge, and there’s a spot that my kumu hula, Makalapua Bernard, has been picking palapalai that I think her kumu hula Mililani Allen showed her. So we hiked up and she was telling us about the area and about palapalai. Our halau performed a couple of oli just to introduce ourselves and make that connection with place and to state our intentions. Then we picked palapalai and it was just incredible. The smell of palapalai, it’s the most pleasant somewhat fishy smell, which sounds weird but that’s what it smells like and it’s incredible. It makes me think of home, it makes me think of Waiʻanae, it makes me think of the mountains. That whole experience was really special.”

In addition to their experiences with palapalai as a hula dancer, ferns–specifically palapalai–are a main focus of Tressa’s research. 

“I started grad school in 2020 and in 2021 I began this field experiment up in Makaha valley. Ferns are really prevalent in the Hawaiian flora, there’s a lot of different species, there’s high endemism, and in areas where there aren’t feral pigs (i.e. fenced areas), they make up a huge portion of the understory. So I wanted to see how they would influence restoration, how they would influence outplanted seedlings and recruitment, and their general role in succession in the Hawaiian flora.”

“We set up in these two sites, one of the sites is an active restoration site with a lot of things going on. The canopy is really open because a lot of invasive species had been removed. Then the other site is this more intact mesic forest site with a pretty closed, mostly native canopy. And the results that I’ve been finding to date have been really interesting because it seems like the ferns–and in this case it’s mostly palapalai– they form these really big, beautiful patches. And we’ve been finding that at the active restoration site, there was a significant increase in survival, specifically for koa as well as a little bit for māmaki in that area, whereas in the established native forest site, the effect of ferns was pretty much neutral across the board with the exception of ukiuki which had a minor negative interaction, possibly because these are both understory species and both occupy the same sort of niche. But for the most part it was positive or neutral reactions and it was really interesting to see the difference between the established forest site and the restoration site because there is the potential then that ferns could be really useful and important for restoration. If ferns can provide some of that ground cover, some of that shelter for those seedlings, then there’s a better chance that they might survive into adulthood.”

“Additionally–and I still need to do a little more looking into this but so far what I’ve noticed from comparing my fern plots to my control plots is that– it seems at the restoration site there was a correlation between fern cover and a decrease in invasive seedlings. This could possibly be because there was less opportunity for those light-loving invasive species to pop up because they were shaded out by the ferns. And then at the established native forest site, what we noticed was that there wasn’t so much of a difference with the invasive species with the fern and control plots, but there was a significant increase in native seedlings in the fern plots, which was really cool to see.”

“One of the absolute coolest things that I’ve noticed from my research so far is that in all of my plots I counted about 310 lama seedlings and 289 of those seedlings were in fern plots and pretty much all of those fern plots had palapalai. That’s really cool to hear especially as a hula dancer, because both lama and palapalai are kinolau of Laka who is the Hawaiian goddess of hula. So much of moʻolelo and oli and song is storytelling and a lot of that is ecological storytelling. Hawaiians were noticing these connections way before I was up there with my notebook. So it was really incredible to see that connection in my data and I’m really excited to do more surveys across the Waiʻanaes and see what other connections there might be between different plants and palapalai.”

We asked Tressa what their hopes are for the future of Hawaiʻi’s ferns.

“I just hope they continue to thrive and grow and more people recognize their importance and their contribution. Although they don’t make flowers and they’re not the showiest of plants, they’re still so valuable. I just hope that people continue to recognize more and more the importance of these beautiful little green beings in our forest and they continue to be resilient and hold their place in the understory–maybe keep some of those invasives out, maybe nurture some of those seedlings of our native canopy species and yeah, I just hope there’s always ferns in the mountains.”

Interviews were edited for clarity and length. Artwork by Carly Lake.