By Heidi Bornhorst
On a windy and sometimes rainy day, Wednesday March 6, 2024, some board members and volunteers from the Friends of Halawa Xeriscape Garden (FOHXG) got a tour of Foster Botancial Garden (FBG) led by Botanist Naomi Hoffman and coordinated by Education Program Specialist Iris Fukunaga.
Did you know that FOHXG, our non-profit garden support group, was modeled on the Friends of Honolulu Botanical Gardens? (Mahalo to FOHXG founding member Paul Weissich, Director emeritus of the Honolulu Botanical Gardens)
We had a great tour seeing some of the fabulous historic and XERIC trees and plants.
Including was the Quipo, a giant fat trunked, water storing tree from South America and its African counterpart the Baobab tree.
We saw a super rare and Exceptional Tree, the Loulu palm known scientifically as Pritchardia lowreyana. It is more than 150 years old, but very slow growing. It was originally collected in Nuʻuanu Valley by the garden’s first Botanist Dr. William Hillebrand and was planted in 1851.
It is now extinct in Nuʻuanu. Happily, Botanist Hoffman informed us that a new population of this rare palm was found in 2008 by Joel Lau and Kenji Suzuki, just below the summit of Pu`u Ohulehule (this is the ridgeline that separates Waikane and Kahana Valleys).
We saw the Double Coconut, Coco de Mer, whose fruit take six years to fully mature and becomes viable to grow new palms. The fruit were the happy horticulture result of hand pollination by Plant Propagator Romel Silva, with pollen air mailed from the Singapore Botanical Garden.
We took a group photo amidst the buttress roots of the Kapok trees, two of which grace upper terrace.
After our tour we had home lunches in the FBG classroom and shared special tasty treats, some from as far as Hokkaido (Mahalo Doug!).
Iris Fukunaga talked to us some more about upcoming educational and volunteer opportunities among our shared gardens.
Note: HBG will be holding their Midsummer Night’s Gleam on Saturday July 20, 2024, for the first time in four years (post COVID). They are looking for volunteers and keiki activities.