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Lehua Alani Flowers at Amy Greenwell Garden

Posted: May 6, 2008

Whenever I’m on the Kona side of the Big Island, I love to visit the Bishop Museum’s Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanic Garden in Captain Cook to see which of the trees in their exceptional ohia lehua collection might be in bloom. 

When I visited their gardens last month, I was thrilled to see an unusual lehua alani (orange lehua) specimen flowering with spectacular orange blossoms. 

This orange lehua is distinctive because the stamens and pistils that make-up its pom-pom shaped flower clusters are different colors. 

When these lehua alani flowers are examined up close, you can see that the multiple stamens on each of the flowers in the cluster are yellow-peach-salmon in color while the single pistil in the middle of each individual flower is dark orange-red. 

The color difference between stamens and pistils are more pronounced when the flowers are fully open. In this photo of a fully open flower cluster, the stamens appear to be almost creamy yellow in color.  If you look closely you can see a clear drop of nectar at the base of the flower which attracts birds, butterflies, bees and other pollinators.   

After lehua flowers are pollinated, the multiple stamens on each flower fall-off, leaving a single pistil behind on each flower in the cluster.  The single pistil losses its dark orange-red color and eventually drops-off the flower as the seeds of the next generation develop and mature within the round calyx. 

The Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanic Garden never disappoints — there is always something spectacular to see.