Monday, June 1, 2020. The Unfurlings...

Summertime... Yesterday was one of those infrequent jawdroppingly gorgeous days up here.  Low humidity, clear brilliant blue skies all day, gentle breezes...and lehua continue to bloom, though not as heavily as last year, and hāpuʻu (tree ferns) unfurl their pepeʻe.  The seasons of our forests...

Hoʻowehe.  "Hoʻo" is a prefix that activates the word it preceeds.

wehe

1. vt.To open, untie, undo, loosen, undress, uncover, unfasten, unlock, unfurl, unsheath, unwrap, unhook, exorcise; to take off, as clothes; to take apart, as a machine; to unfix, as a bayonet; to tip, as a hat; to solve, as a problem; to cleanse of defilement, remove, forgive, satisfy (see ex., kīkīpani 1). See ex., alaula. Wehe ʻaha mele, to hold a concert. Wehe ā kohana, to strip naked. Wehe i ka pihi, unbutton the buttons. hoʻo.wehe To cause to open, undo, etc. (PCP we(f,s)e.)

So hoʻowehe is, in the following instances, to unfurl or to unwrap.  

Browsing the Dictionary is a pleasure.  One can sit and pageturn for however long it suits.  And random is the best, because you never know what will attract your attention.  There is always, always, something to learn, specific or obscure, itʻs always interesting.

Many hāpuʻu pulu (the ones with the golden, soft pulu) are just about pau expanding their pepeʻe, the coiled up fronds.  

Iʻve been photographing one particular hāpuʻu from the kitchen window for a few months.  The window may help explain the fuzziness of the pics, but the idea was to document the wehe-ing of the fronds.  As with many many of our endemic (unique to a specific area) plants, many uses were discovered for various parts.  And hāpuʻu are no exception:

hā.puʻu

n.

1. An endemic tree fern (Cibotium splendens, formerly called C. chamissoi), common in many forests of Hawaiʻi, as at Kī-lau-ea Volcano, and now frequently cultivated. These ferns grow about 5 m high, and the trunks are crowned with large, triangular, lacy-looking fronds up to 2.7 m long, their light brown stems rising from a mass of silky, golden pulu (wool). Young stems were formerly used to make hats; the pulu was used as a dressing and to embalm the dead and later as stuffing for pillows and mattresses. The starchy trunk core has been used for cooking and laundry, the outer fibrous part to line or form baskets for plants. Young shoots are called pepeʻe. (Neal 10.) Also hāpuʻu pulu.

The above uses are aside from using them for landscaping, or a trunk upon which to grow orchids.

HOʻOWEHE NĀ PEPEʻE

Probably best to simply scroll down...

Above, February 27, the heads of pepeʻe beginning to emerge.  

March 15, enshrouded with pulu

March 31

April 6

April 20

April 27

June 1

During May, the pinnae have firmed up, lost their droopyness, and become a darker green.  The frond is heavier, and has a more graceful arc.  The sequence above took three months of slow, incremental change.  Kinda reminds me of nūnī.  slow Slow SLOW... But surely getting better.

Above, the still-soft bright green frond, next to one in the process of unfurling.  NOTE:  the central rib, the side "branches", and the pendant (droopy) "branchlets".

Or...

USDA Forest Service

Then below, an ʻamaʻu from friend ac... Note that pinnules are on the midrib...one less "branch", and the frond is arranged more simply. 

And closeups... First hāpuʻu pulu.  I love seeing the taut pulu covering the tightly coiled pinnae.

Then, again, below, the more simply arranged ʻamaʻu.  Its pulu is more hair-like.

Pulu, pulu, pulu... Lots of pulu.  An industry?

Hawaii Nature Notes, November 1953, v5n2

The "Factory" mentioned above was mainly a field for drying pulu, along with accessory buildings.  The region was leased by a Hawaiian gentleman, Lord George Kaina, who happens to have been related to Isabella (Izzie) Abbott, she of limu and Hawaiʻi ethnobotany fame who grew up in Kapuʻeuhi (Glenwood), relatively close to the pulu processing area.

And that "rough road"? Some of it was made of hāpuʻu trunks laid crosswise, making for a very bumpy corduroy road.  Imagine that!  "Corduroy" refers to the texture and the "ride" one gets while traversing the route.  Kinda like when people drive too fast on gravel roads, the bumpbumpbump somehow sorts the gravels and creates humpy lines perpendicular to the shoulders, making for an extremely jarring passageway.

Try wrap your mind around 6.6 MILLION pounds of pulu!  I canʻt.  The numbers above are from Thrumʻs Hawaiian Annual.  An industry developed here by resourceful folks who apparently were excellent marketers too, engaged workers to harvest, dry, bag, and export pulu.  The Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite once had pulu-stuffed mattresses and pillows.  But...pulu disintegrates fairly quickly, and doesnʻt maintain fluffiness.  Built-in obsolescence.  If only such creativity and energy were present today as folks searched for alternatives to tourism.  Actually, I think the energy and creativity are there, especially among younger people.  Itʻs just that many, too many, Legislators are stuck in the old way of doing things.  Auē!!!

The Bobby-dwarfing specimen of hāpuʻu pulu above is in a friends yard.  We think that this little area was perhaps missed in the 1960ʻs or so when massive amounts of hāpuʻu were pillaged from forests and sold, sometimes to fashion decorative tikis (kiʻi), as these found on an online auction site.  The furriness of the trunk are the roots of the tree fern.

Trunks were also chipped/chopped as media sold to orchid growers, or, more simply, the trunks were "planted" in the ground, and stems of vanda orchid tied or fence-nailed to them as was done at Kapoho in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.  The darkish line across the bottom of the photo below are sections of hāpuʻu, and the puʻu is Waiapele (Kapoho Crater).  

In the Soil Conservation Service 1973 "Soil Survey of Island of Hawaii" by Harry H. Sato, we learn that in 1964, according to the US Census of Agriculture, there were 35 vanda-type orchid farms on our fair isle, and they sold 27,817,600 flowers.  And when the publication was written, our island population was 65,941.

dissolve.com  By Pacific Stock for Kensington

The flowers were carefully taken apart and the bottoms were commonly fashioned into lei vanda.  Properly, the "bottoms", the darker purple, orangey yellow part, are labellum.

nparks.gov.sg

If your timing is good, and flowers are blooming, and leimakers are inclined, we can still buy lei vanda today.  Try KTA in Hilo...

withouraloha.com on Pinterest

Too, back to hāpuʻu, there was an idea in the 1920s that a starch industry (more creativity...) could be started.  

But...there always seems to be a "But..." hāpuʻu grow slowly.  Perhaps its saving grace.  You might calculate and imagine how old my companion pictured above is.

And folks remain optimistic and try try again to create industry.

Thatʻs it for today.

As always, with aloha,

BobbyC

maniniowali@gmail.com