By Melany H. Chapin
If you look around your home, attend a hula ceremony, or visit a museum you will see the stunning rich wood products that were grown right here from our forests in Hawaii.
Koa (Acacia koa) is world famous for its deep reddish brown grain. As a hardwood it is often made into containers, picture frames, musical instruments, and even exquisite furniture. According to Marie Neal, Hawaiian plant expert and author, the early native Hawaiian people realized the value of koa and used it to make canoes, surfboards and calabashes.
"It was then as it is now, possibly the most valuable lumber tree in Hawaii," Neal says. The tree itself is a beautiful addition to a landscape or can be an incredible sight to come across in the wild, especially some of the old giants of the forest.
Lama (Diospyros) is in the same family as persimmons and ebony. This is a mostly dry forest tree with leathery, oval leaves and grows in areas interior to Kona and in South Kona. The tree can reach about 20 to 35 feet in height, has a broad crown and a dark blackish bark. Like ebony, it is a hardwood with fine, straight dense grain that is reddish brown.
Lama was highly prized by the early Hawaiian people who used it to build temples. They also used it as tide gates for their fish ponds. An enclosure made of lama wood was called a "palama." Neal notes that a piece of the wood wrapped in yellow kapa cloth was used in the temple of Laka, goddess of the hula, to represent her. Lama means "a light."
Kauila (Alphitonia ponderosa, Colubrina oppositifolia) is a very hard wood in the buckthorn family. These trees grow in the dry to the mesic forests. Alphitonia has alternate leaves that are thick and oblong to narrow; while Colubrina has opposite leaves. The tree bark is whitish and deeply corrugated. Early Hawaiian people used the same common name, Kauila, for the two different trees.
The wood of these trees is a stunning deep reddish color streaked with black. It is so dense that it sinks in water. The Hawaiian people realized the value of this incredible wood and fashioned it into spears, javelins, carrying poles, oo sticks, kapa beaters, and even weights for fishing lines. Today, the wood is still prized for its beauty.
Mamane (Sophora chrysophylla) is in the pea family. It is a small to medium tree that can reach 40 feet in height in healthy trees and 3 feet in diameter. On the Big Island it grows from sea level to 10,000 feet on Mauna Kea. It has compound light green leaves, and bright yellow blossoms. It is striking when the tree is in bloom. The bark is light brown and deeply furrowed. The wood warps easily but the Hawaiian people found the hard, durable wood useful for house construction, oo sticks, spades and for making sled runners used for sliding down steep rocky paths.
According to Samuel Lamb, who authored a book on Hawaii trees, mamane was used for fence posts in modern times and it was such a hard wood that stronger staples had to be created in order for them to work on the mamane posts. Mamane grows between Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea and Hualalai in pure stands and within the ohia forests.
If you are among the newer residents of the Big Island you may consider saving some of the old growth native forest trees as part of your landscape when clearing, then adding more native trees and shrubs to have a truly spectacular view. The trees you must clear for building you may want to save for woodworking or incorporating into your house.
There are many more trees that are important today and historically as sources of wood that grow in our Big Island native forests, and not enough room here to describe them all. This is just one aspect of appreciation of the richness and value that our forests offer. To find out more about our native forests, visit the Web sites http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/forestry, and http://www.agroforestry.net.
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