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Natural History

Loulu Palm
(Pritchardia spp.)

Over 4,000 kinds of palms exist on Earth. They've been useful to natives in tropical countries as food. They've provided people with useful fibers, materials for furniture and leaves for thatching huts. Some experts list as many as 33 species and six varieties of fan palm that are endemic to the Hawaiian islands. All of them are called loulu.

Fossil pollen evidence shows that loulu was much more common in Hawaii's ancient past. Now they grow in small scattered groves or as lone specimen trees. Some species stand above the other plants in the canopy of the rain forests.

There are types of loulu that are unique to each of the Hawaiian islands. Some islands have more than one type, and each is unique to a mountain, valley or particular area on that island or mountain. On Oahu, for example, Pritchardia martii is native to the Ko'olaus. It has fruits the size of golf balls and the mature palms have silvery leaf undersides.

Molokai has the loulu lelo, P. hillebrandii. This one, too has silvery leaf undersides, but the fruit is black and marble-sized. One rare Molokai tree, named after George Munro, of Lanai forest and watershed protection fame, (P. munroi), was reduced to just one tree growing in the wild. Specimen plants of the tree are growing in botanical gardens and will be reintroduced into the wild one day.

There is a loulu that only grew on the dry and salty lowlands on the Kona side of the Big Island, and Niihau has its own unique type as does the islet of Nihoa, northwest of Niihau. There is a miniature fan palm, P. glabrata, with slender trunks and fan-shaped green leaves that once grew only on Maui.
In all species, the hard wood was made into spears if the trunk was long enough.

The leaves of the Hawaiian fan palms are borne in a cluster at the top of a ringed trunk. Each ring on the trunk is a scar from one-attached leaf stems. The leaves are very large. Most are rigid. They are broad fan-shaped leaves, shallowly cut with many twice-divided clefts. The undersides of the leaves, the strong spineless leaf stems and the flower stems often have a waxy or felt-like covering.

The young, bleached leaves of the loulu were used in plaiting. The blade tissues between the radiating veins of very young leaves were torn into strips and woven into fans and baskets. In modern times, they were used for hats.

Sometimes the leaves were used for thatching. In ancient times the common people built small, temporary shrines to honor and propitiate the gods of fishing using the leaves. These small shrines were made in addition to the regular fishing shrines and were called heiau loulu.

The numerous golden yellow flowers of the loulu palm occur in clusters. They each have a three-toothed calyx and a tubular corolla with three segments. The segments fall off when the flower opens. There are six stamens and a three-lobed and three-celled ovary.

Only one cell of the ovary produces a round or oval fruit that is called a drupe. The fruit, called hawane or wahane, can be green to yellow to brown or black at maturity. Fruit size, shape and color vary by species. They are usually very smooth externally with a fleshy or fibrous layer covering a thin woody shell which in turn covers a hard seed. In modern times, the seeds have been used to make lei.

The unripe fruit were sometimes peeled and eaten by Hawaiians. They are said to taste "something like coconut."

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Arts & Culture

Old Time Kaanapali

Kaanapali is a place with many stories. When Maui chief Kakaalaneo ruled over West Maui, this area was his capital. At one time its biggest claim to fame was that it was the birthplace of Kaululaau, the Maui chief's famous son. Kaululaau traveled all over Lanai fighting the numerous ghosts there and making it a place where people could live.

The area's most outstanding feature is Puu Kekaa, "the rumbling hill". It is the black cinder and spatter cone that dominates one of Maui's loveliest
beaches. The Maui chief Kahekili, who made a habit of leaping from heights into water, dived off the "Black Rock" to prove that he was a true descendant of the gods. No ordinary man, it was said, would dare to leap from that place which was said to be a casting-off place of the soul, where spirits came after their bodies had died.

In more ancient times, there were legends surrounding other large rocks in the area, including one that was supposed to be the body of Moemoe (or Sleep), a mortal man who irritated Maui by taunting the demigod, saying that slowing down the sun was an impossible task and, anyway, who was Maui to think he could do it? Another large rock was supposed to be the rock at the Halulukoakoa heiau on which a chiefess, Wahine-o-Manua, slept after being led to safety by an owl god.

The old stories say the area around Kekaa and all along the coastal region along the northwestern coast was once continuously cultivated. In 1940, E. S. Craighill Handy mentioned that during Chief Kakaalaneo's reign, potatoes, bananas and sugar cane grew in the areas to the northwest of Lahaina. These lands only supported cacti in Handy's time. (Kakaalaneo was apparently a great farmer-chief. Lahaina's famed breadfruit trees as well as the kukui trees planted there were credited to him.)
 

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Braddah-Nics Lexicon

STANDARD: This is my treat.
BRADDAH-NICS: Neva mind, you! I get 'em!

* * * * * *

STANDARD: I didn't want her to catch me.
BRADDAH-NICS: I nevah like her bus' me!

* * * * * *

STANDARD: Did you see the look she gave you?
BRADDAH-NICS: You nevah see her side-eye you one stink one on the sly?

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Local Grinds

Coconut Cupcake with Guava Frosting
 

Ingredients:

Procedure:

Scald milk, butter, sugar and coconut syrup together. Sift flour, baking powder and salt. Stir into milk mixture. Whip egg whites until foamy; add cream of tartar and whip again until mixture is stiff but moist. Fold into cake mixture. Bake in greased muffin tin at 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.
Let cool for 5 minutes and top with Guava Frosting.
Makes 12 cup cakes.
 

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Spotlight On…

Iliiliopae Heiau

"Heiau" - The Hawaiian term for religious temple or place of worship.
Said to be perhaps the oldest religious site in Hawaii, the Iliiliopae Heiau was regarded for being not just a place of worship, but as a "sorcerers school" as well. Once looming so large over the Molokai landscape that it could be seen by approaching canoes from Maui, the Heiau has since become a large platform of stones once comprising a temple.

These stones, round, water worn, and thousands in number, came to their current home from a site 8 miles and a mountain away, via the steep Wailua Trail. How did they get there? The common belief is that the stones were transported hand to hand via an 8 mile long human chain. Legend has it that upon arrival, these special stones were laid not by men, but Menehune: a miniature, sometimes mischievous, people; a sort of Hawaiian Elf. It is said that these mystical workers laid by hand the Iliiliopae Heiau for the simple reward of one freshwater shrimp each.

Upon completion, the Iliiliopae Heiau became one of the islands most powerful temples of worship and ritual. To appease their gods, human sacrifices were carried out at the Heiau, an unfortunate fact both legend and Missionary transcripts attest to. Legend also states that it is this practice that may have led to the destruction of the once mighty temple . . .

As it goes; a Hawaiian priest at once lost nine of his sons to a ritual sacrifice at Iliiliopae. Enraged, he called upon his own ancestral Aumakua - a shark god - to exact revenge. As asked, the shark god sent a flood of water to Iliiliopae, washing away the temple, leaving only the large raised stone and earth platform which lies at the site today.
 

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