2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the National Tropical Botanical Garden. Every month we will weave a lei for you, one that brings together plants and stories from our five botanic gardens. Created by Katrina Cacal, July’s lei highlights native Hawaiian plants grown in our McBryde Garden.
Hau kuahiwi (Hibiscadelphus distans)
Within McBryde Garden is the largest assemblage of native Hawaiian plants in the world. This beautiful lei by Katrina Cacal celebrates a few of our incredibly special native plants that can be found in McBryde Garden, and highlights how building connections with plants can help us to see the true beauty and uniqueness of the places we call home.
Just $25 powers a year of impact for plants and people no matter where you live. You’ll also receive The Bulletin magazine and invitations to special member events.
Join usLei making has become a love language for me. The act of picking the flowers, creating a design and all the while I’m considering who or why I’m making the lei. I truly enjoy the whole process.
When I saw the hau kuahiwi (Hibiscadelphus distans), a hibiscus relative that only grows on Kauaʻi, the very local phrase “Kauaʻi as why” popped into my head. All the blooms we came across were so cute and tiny, it just made sense to me to create a lei poʻo using them. I loved the texture of the kuluʻi (Nototrichium sandwicense) blooms–it adds to the shape of the lei po’o. The white flower of the naupaka (Scaevola taccada var. taccada) brings out the yellow in the ʻākia (Wikstroemia uva-ursi) blooms and allows the red in the hau kuahiwi to pop. I was really excited to create this lei using all these native plants and am extremely happy with how it turned out.
Working with plants has been the most humbling and at the same time creatively freeing experience. I love learning about plants, their life cycle and their environments. My advice is to go outside and to keep your eyes open and to be curious. My love of plants stemmed from my love of hiking and exploring. To see certain plants exist only in one place in the world is exciting. It reminds me of the first time I came across the mokihana berry (melicope spp.) while hiking deep in Kōkeʻe. We were a couple miles in, and may have been a bit lost but as we were trying to find our way back to the trail the very distinctive familiar smell of mokihana hit me. I got so excited and immediately followed my nose to find it and I only picked a few just so I could carry that smell with me. No one else I was hiking with knew what it was or what it meant to me. The only way I could describe it to them was that it smells like home, like Kauaʻi.
Discover all of our lei legacy stories and check out upcoming events in celebration of NTBG’s 60th anniversary.
