Friday, August 27, 2021. A bit of this, a bit of that...

 A few have wondered recently:  "Have you posted lately?".  So here we are...

Itʻs been an interesting Summer.  Chilly and damp much of the time, I sit here in a hoodie and sweatpants because I refuse to turn on the propane "Looks Like a Woodstove" heater.  Itʻs Summer!  Weʻve had maybe a day or two a week of clear and hot.  Otherwise, overcast and drizzly.  But...everything seems to be blooming.  ʻAʻaliʻi and their boy girl boygirl bewilderments, the most fragrant pink climbing wild roses, pōpōhau (those snowballs of paleblue hydrangea), the yellow-flowered kūpaʻoa shrubs on the way to Keanakākoʻi are fully laden, albeit briefly; ʻōhelo kau lāʻau are fruiting, and of course, though seemingly a bit late, the roadside gingers are gingering up a storm!

Kūpaʻoa (Dubautia ciliolata)

My phone takes good pictures if allowed, but unsteady hand and wind often prevent sharp images.  I trust that you get the idea.  If you walk to Keanakākoʻi in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, after you get out of the forested first half-mile, youʻll enjoy lots of these alongside the pavement.  And, if conditions of heat, windspeed and direction encourage, youʻll enjoy the fleeting scent.

Folks often talk of and enjoy our lehua of many colors.  But it turns out that many of our endemic plants, those with specifically limited natural range, are also very variable.  Take wiliwili.  A denizen mostoften of dry lower elevation leeward forests, its flower colors can astound.

On Maui, by Art Medeiros

A Maui wiliwili, by a friend of eb

Waikoloa Dry Forest Initiative

The pic above is the form Iʻm most familar with...the salmon orange of Kekaha, Kona ʻĀkau.  And though I couldnʻt find a photo, Iʻm recalling a greenish one at the bottom of the road up to Kōkeʻe on Kauaʻi.

and why not get them all together?
from:  invasive.org

But.  Pretty sure at least some of you are wondering:  Whatʻs up with Pele?

In the news earlier this week:  a Swarm of Earthquakes.  What She doing?  Going go?  What?  When?  Where?

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday this past week, Pele was moving underground, revisiting near the site of the brief 14 hour or so eruption of September 25-26, 1982.

The screenshot above is from Bing.  The Sept82 flow is the grey area, lower left, held by the curve of Crater Rim Trail.  To its right is Keanakākoʻi.  And yes, the image isnʻt current, depicting as it does, the loko wai in the bottom of Halemaʻumaʻu.

Yesterday I walked to Keanakākoʻi, and from my perch on the stonewall:

Hoping against hope that eruptive fume would start rising...the little bluff in the distance, just past where the road curves right is near a source of the Sept82 luaʻi pele.

Following screenshots are from the 24th, 25th, and 27th.  Always good, if you wonder, to GoLook the HVO Seismic webpage:

HVO Earthquake Page

Fiddle with the green menu boxes to suit your viewing pleasure.  No foʻget the one at the bottom left corner.  That allows you to select the sort of baselayer image you desire.  I like "ESRI World Imagery".

And the + / - at upper left corner allows you to zoom in or out.  

So yes, there was a swarm, but pele did not, as of now, reach the surface.  And again, all that busyness lower left above are the "Pahala quakes", related, some say to deep magma transport.  Theyʻre the ones that are 15-20 miles deep.

I love the colored confetti-like dots.  From the HVO webpage, a graphic summary of location and depth.  

And then we wonder about the Tilt:

Up Down upUP down etc.  To my eyes, no real discernable correlation, but then again, a Seismologist Iʻm not...  So as is usual, we wait, we wonder, and we shall see what Pele decides to reveal.

If weʻre waiting for the emergence of our next island though, weʻll be waiting A Very Long Time.  We waited maybe 15 or 20 years, but at its meeting on July 6, 2021, the Hawaiʻi Board on Geographic Names voted unanimously to change the name of that next island from Lōʻihi to Kamaʻehuakanaloa, or Kamaʻehu for short.  "The reddish child of Kanaloa", he whose kuleana are ocean-related.  Thereʻll be more news about this forthcoming, but meantime, GoLook the HBGN website:

Information regarding Kamaʻehuakanaloa

Summarizing very briefly, "Lōʻihi" and names of four other seamounts in the area were bestowed in 1955 by Mrs Pukui and Mrs Hohu of Bishop Museum after a request by Kenneth Emery (not Kenneth Emory of Bishop Museum).  The names were simply descriptors of the characteristics of the features.  And yes, naming practices often include...What does it look like?  But twenty or thirty or more years ago, hula practitioners, including Kumu Pua Kanahele and Nalani Kanakaole were educating us about chants, and names and phenomena found in them.  It is understood that "out there, under the surface of the ocean" is growing our next island, just as all our other mauna were birthed from the sea.

Too, in the news on the Island of Hawaiʻi were fires.  BIG extensive range fires up by Waimea.  Impressive, sad, destructive fires.  Before the current CoViD Delta variant pilikia, I drove to Waimea via the Saddle and Waikiʻi just after the biggest fire.  Big puʻu near base of slope between the two horses is Holoholokū, and the one at far right is Nohonaohae, Kona-side near the bottom of the road up to Waikiʻi.  That band of black at the base of Maunakea?  Burnt vegetation, mostly grasses.

Lots of smokes can be seen creeping up mauna slope.  And by said Nohonaohae, we stopped to nānā and smell...the windsculpted fireash, both volcanic and burned, mauna rising ma uka.  Imagine a heavy rain on parched sunbaked slopes...rivers of ashymud.  Auē!

And though another fire, below, the one by Kilohana Girl Scout Camp, was just days old, grass already sprouts...There, pre-fire, persisted big patches of native mountaingrasses.  I pray they are able to out-compete alien species as they regrow.  Haleakalā rises above camp-encircling trees.

The primary alien grass of concern, as we saw (last time?) on the pali at Waipiʻo, and below, is fountaingrass, that relative of kikuyu.  Both from Africa.

The first pic below, adjacent to Pōhakuloa Training Area has ʻāweoweo, protected by a roadside fence,  surrounded by fountaingrass.  ʻĀweoweo (Chenopodium oahuense), named perhaps because some plants smell fishy...like the fish of the same name, is endemic to Hawaiʻi.  Slope of Maunaloa rises in the distance.

Just down the road, unfenced, and near Puʻukeʻekeʻe, another ʻāweoweo, this one trimmed, pruned, and browsed by goats.  They (the goats) stand up and reach as high as they can.

So very very sad...and seeing the parched land, no wonder a spark, just a spark, can go wild.

So apparently, can CoViD Delta.  Just a spark.

For $%^*&@#$ sake, PLEASE if you havenʻt already, GET VACCINATED!!!  I hope that, now Pfizer is FDA Approved, that vaccine (and others to come) will be mandatory.  MANDATORY.  Like the Hawaiʻi Department of Education REQUIRES:

END OF CONVERSATION.  DAMMIT.  The few people I know who havenʻt been vaccinated, I pick up my left arm and shake it at them:  THIS!  You want this???  POLIO!  In 1955, though released on the East Coast, the polio vaccine hadnʻt yet reached the Territory of Hawaiʻi.  I got sick.  Do NOT talk to me about Personal Freedoms, My Choice, Liberty, I Donʻt Trust The Government. If you donʻt get vacced for reasons other than foʻreal medical or religious, and get CoViD, you should be on your own.  Donʻt even THINK of seeking medical help.  Our medical care providers are on the brink of exhaustion.  Why the hell should they clean up your mess???

Whew.  OK.  Go.  Get.  Your.  Shot(s).   Just like we wear seatbelts, wear clothes in public, and donʻt defecate on the sidewalk... No Excuses.  Get with the program.

Till next time...Iʻm staying home till the heat is off...You should too.

As always, with aloha,

BobbyC

maniniowali@gmail.com