The wonders of wiliwili

When the lands get really dry and other plants are stressed, the wiliwili drops its leaves and blooms.

The iconic tree was the centerpiece of a celebration in Waikoloa over the weekend, and the increasingly popular Wiliwili Festival had celebrants out in the field getting their hands dirty propagating their own native plants.

Festival attendees took home trays of koa, wiliwili, pohinahina and other species, and Jen Lawson was just a wee bit closer to her goal.

“We’re trying to get people to understand there was once a vibrant dryland forest and we still do have remnants of it,” said Lawson, executive director of the Waikoloa Dry Forest Initiative, which oversees a 275-acre fenced preserve near Waikoloa Village.

“We try to get people out to the forest to show them plants that used to be here in abundance,” she said.

Ten percent or less of those native dry forests remain, and the time to plant the trees was 100 years ago, Lawson said. With volunteer help from many organizations, schools and individuals, she and field technician Jessica Middleton reforest 10 to 15 acres of aa lava and grassland each year in about 40 species of endemic and rare trees, shrubs and other plants.

One of them is the uhiuhi tree, of which there are only about 50 left in the state, Middleton told a group of visitors touring the preserve on Saturday.

Kealakehe Intermediate teachers Karen Foster and Leilani Neddermeyer went along on last year’s tour. Foster was glad to see the native shrub ilima gaining ground in its fight against invasive fountain grass.

The teachers propagate native plants at their homes and plan to involve their students in reforestation initiatives beginning next year.

In the preserve’s shade house, Neddermeyer poked seeds of the fragrant blooming shrub kolomona into plastic containers filled with soil.

“I’ll take these to my class so they can learn something,” said Neddermeyer, who recalled her father gathering medicinal plants from the land to clear his lungs.

Foster handled the flat, shiny seeds of koa, learning to scar the seeds’ hard shells so they would germinate.

“I wanted to get more koa so the hawks come back,” said Foster, who lives north of Kaloko. “I transplanted one from the top of Kaloko, and it didn’t make it.”

Never far from the mind were the wiliwili, here and there on the aa landscape, gnarled arms clutching fistfuls of orange blooms.

“That was the closest I’ve ever been to a wiliwili,” gasped an enthusiastic young explorer after making a trip across the lava to stand next to the largest tree on the landscape.

The wiliwili, under assault from an invasive gall wasp, were the main reason the preserve was formed, said Lawson. Biocontrol of the insect has helped roll back the threat. Nevertheless, 50 percent of the wiliwili in Waikoloa have died because of the wasp, Lawson said.

Long favored by craftsmen for its soft, easily worked wood, wiliwili was a favorite material for building single-man canoes and surfboards, said Native Hawaiian practitioner Hualalai Keohuloa.

“Everything on the mountain has its counterpart in the ocean,” Keohuloa said. “Wiliwili’s counterpart is the shark. That way we know wiliwili is one of the oldest trees, because the shark is one of the oldest animals.”

Planting season at the preserve runs from late October into April. Along with organized group and school efforts, the Waikoloa Dry Forest Initiative holds Saturdays open so visitors can drop in and help with the planting.

“A lot of volunteers come out,” Lawson said. “We couldn’t do it otherwise.”

The Wiliwili Festival, now in its fourth year, is gaining in popularity with a mix of educational workshops, music and cultural and historical lectures.