North Shore NewsBy: David Orr
Now, out of print and hard to find, In Gardens of Hawai‘i, published by the Bishop Museum in the late 1940s is one of the best general books covering natives and exotics found in Hawaiian gardens. Unfortunately, much of the taxonomy is out of date, but the book is rich with Hawaiian lore and plant stories. The author, Marie C Neal, for whom the rainbow shower tree, (Cassia X nealiae), is named, was a friend of the great Mary Kawena Pukui who co-authored the Hawaiian Dictionary. She probably provided many of the stories. There are two legends about the “half-flowers” of the beach and mountain naupaka plants. There are flowering specimens of both right across the path from each other, near the corner of the Hawaiian Garden (“Hawaiian Garden A”) that surrounds the 2nd pond, next to the yellow cinder block enclosure. Everyone knows the beach naupaka (naupaka kahakai, Scaevola taccada) an indigenous native found on almost every tropical seashore in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Only avid hikers know about our endemic Naupaka kuahiwi. There are at least seven endemic species which evolved in Hawaii’s forests and nowhere else.
The similarity of these flowers found in such different habitats has given rise to many legends of unrequited love, as the two “halves” of the flowers evoke an imagery of “fitting together”. Marie Neal gives two stories: in one, a woman takes a full naupaka flower and rips it in two, telling her spurned lover that he can only return if he brings her another full flower, but, alas, he dies alone, only finding halfflowers wherever he looks. The other story involves Pele, who incognito, falls for a young man. When he rejects her in favor of his old girlfriend, Pele was enraged and chased him to the forest where the gods took pity and transformed him into the mountain half-flower. Frustrated, Pele took off to the beach where the gods saved the young woman from Pele’s wrath by changing her into the naupaka kahakai half-flower, leaving the two lovers forever separated.
There are several other versions of the story of the Naupaka, such as: the story of Princess Naupaka who falls in love with a handsome young fisherman named Kaui. They were forbidden to marry because he was not of the same rank as she was. To make a long story short, Princess Naupaka tore a flower in half, giving him one half and keeping the other for herself. She told him to live near the seashore while she returned to her home in the mountains. From then on, there was a half flower that grew near the seashore and a half flower that grew in the mountains, representing the star-crossed lovers. For a more in-depth look at the Botanical wonders of Waimea Valley, hop on the daily Botanical Tour at 12:30pm, included with the valley admission!