Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden
March, 2012
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Contact me (garya at this domain) if you want the really good image
The next morning on our way out we stopped by the post office on the road to Akaka Falls State Park,
which we had seen the day before on our way up there.
We dropped off a package to mail home --
our masks, fins, and snorkels.
We gave the post-office lady our left-over fuel canisters to hand out to whoever could use them,
plus a few other things we couldn't or didn't want to fly back.
We had one big thing on our agenda for our last day on the Big Island,
and that was a visit to the
Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden .
It's not an officially sanctioned garden of the state of Hawaii,
but rather a private garden established as a non-profit organization
by a now-deceased resident who was a lover of botany.
Wow! It exceeded our expectations by quite a bit.
We would consider it a must-see on any first time visit.
I'm not sure what to say other than to allow plenty of time to enjoy it.
Not only were there flowers,
but some great trees,
and if you looked closely and took your time,
great birds, reptiles, and amphibians.
The whole thing made you wonder at the marvels of mother nature,
and wonder why anyone even needs a fantasy-land
when there is so much of the real world that is incredible.
There were a lot of different varieties of heliconia,
all of them outlandish and spectacular.
And there were more kinds of ginger than you could keep track of.
So we didn't try...
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| Rose Ginger |
Xxx Ginger |
The Cat's Whiskers were one of our favorites.
Look closely -- the tips of the whiskers are violet.
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| Impatiens |
Xxx Purple Flower |
Cat's Whiskers |
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| Purple Hibiscus |
Sandpiper Vine |
Not only the flowers,
but the ground cover in general was worth noting.
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| Medinilla Scortechinii |
Persian Shield |
The Bombax tree has a wonderful flower,
but the Cannonball tree was truly aptly named.
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| Bombax Tree Flower |
Cannonball Tree |
Cannonball Fruit |
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| Xxx Orchid |
Xxx Orchid |
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| Xxx Orchid |
Malaysian Orchid |
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I was particularly taken by this blue bromeliad.
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| Xxx Blue Bromeliad |
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| Xxx Red Flower |
Aphelandra |
Medinilla Magnifica |
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| Xxx White Flower |
There were these big tree ferns
with trunks a deep red.
There was even an ironwood tree, which we had never seen.
We were familiar with the wood itself,
but I had imagined it as a "regular" tree
with a single tall, relatively straight, trunk.
And the jackfruit tree just seemed a bit too suggestive to be called that.
Who was "Jack" anyway?
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| Tree Fern Trunk |
Ironwood Tree |
Jackfruit Tree |
They had the mandatory aviary with some caged Macaws.
It seemed a bit out of place in the otherwise unconstrained setting,
but the birds really are crazy.
They had a blue one too,
but it was hard to take pictures through the heavy mesh of the aviary.
But there were other birds flitting around,
and I finally got a picture of a Northern Cardinal,
something we had seen several times other places earlier in the week.
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| Scarlet Macaw |
Northern Cardinal |
The most amazing animal we saw was the Green Gecko we found
while looking at... some flowers, I can't remember what.
It looked like something out of a kid's coloring book.
There is a pond with some Koi in it; not sure why,
and fish in a small artificial pond always look dumb to me.
I'm surprised nothing has eaten them all.
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| Koi |
Even where there weren't flowers, there were |
The garden is 40 or so acres,
located on a steep hillside that runs down to the ocean.
A small creek cascaded down through it,
with Onomea Bay at the bottom.
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| Onomea Falls |
Onomea Bay |
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| Onomea Bay |
There is a legend regarding the jagged rocks in the mouth of the bay.
Here it is, as explained on a sign in the garden:
The village of Kahali'i was located on this large point of land
which extends into Onomea Bay.
Though the village is gone, the descendants of Kahali'i still remember
some of the legends concerning the area's landmarks.
One story tells of the origin of two rock formations at the head of Onomea Bay
that are said to be a young man and woman, known as the lovers of Kahali'i.
Legend has it that one day,
a chief of the village spotted many canoes with sails heading shoreward in their direction.
Fearing an attack the chiefs and village elders held a council to determine
a course of action.
They decided to build a reef to prevent a landing on their beaches.
Not having the means to complete the task quickly enough,
they asked for two young lovers to be the guides and protectors of the village
by giving their lives.
Two willing individuals were found.
That night a decree was sent to all who lived at Kahali'i
to remain indoors from sunset to sunrise without making any light or sound,
on penalty of death.
In the light of the new day,
everyone went down to the shoreline where they were amazed to find the lovers gone,
and in their place two gigantic rock formations at the entrance of the Bay,
attached to each other, as if on guard.
The chief informed the people that no canoe could now pass the treacherous
currents swirling around the rocks unless allowed to do so by the guardians.
The lovers and their offspring still stand today,
sentinels at the head of the Bay.
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| Twin Rocks |
The garden has a large statue of Ku,
a Hawaiian God,
carved by a well-known local artist,
William "Rocky" Vargas of Hilo.
The wood for the carving is from an 80 year old Monkey Pod tree
which used to be in the garden but died.
Ku -- Hawaiian God
In the beginning in Hawaiian mythology,
Po was a vast and dark empty land.
Only one life form dwelled there.
It was the spirit of Keawe,
his single light shining and holding the energy of creation.
Keawe evolved order.
He opened his great calabash and flung the lid into the air
and it became the huge canopy of blue sky.
Keawe then drew an orange disk from his calabash
hanging it from the sky to become the sun.
Next Keawe manifested himself as Na Wahine,
a female divinity considered his daughter.
In addition he became Kane,
his own son who was the male generative force of creation.
Hina (Na Wahine) and Kane mated spiritually to produce a royal family:
KU, LONO, and KANALOA along with KANE,
to become the four major Hawaiian Gods.
KU and HINA, per Hawaiian legend,
are invoked as great ancestral Gods of heaven and earth
who have spiritual control over the fruitfulness of earth
and the generations of mankind.
A great number of sub-ordinate Gods have suffixes added to KU's name:
i.e. KU-moku-hali'i (Meaning "KU spreading over the land").
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| Ku |
We finished up our visit to the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden
by backtracking up the road a bit to a smoothie stand,
where we ate our cheese and crackers for lunch
with some great smoothies made using local organic fruit.
Yum!
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| Smoothies! |
Then we worked our way
back to Hilo.
