After the Northwest Flower and Garden Show each year I want to relax. I usually try and schedule a vacation. The show is a hard act to follow so I have to choose wisely. I try to build on the feeling of spring that I felt at the show. This year that meant Maui.
I have heard lots of hype about this place and lots of negative comments about the amount of tourists and traffic. There are a lot of tourists and lots of tour busses. However, the places I go are usually away from crowds, hard to get to, or of little interest to most tourists. Botanical gardens barely receive a mention in the guide books. Hiking to beaches, waterfalls, and arboreteums are not for the usual tourist.
I usually pick up a couple of specific plant books about the area and bring my ‘Hikers Guide to Trailside Plants in Hawaii’ (John B Hall). The climate of the Hawaiian Islands are so friendly that many many plants brought from other places escape and grow with wild abandon in Hawaii. The trails are a botanical wonder for diversity of plants from all regions of the world. One of the books I bought was ‘Maui’s Floral Splendor” by Angela Kepler. This book has good content and a warning about the invasive plants strangling Maui’s natural areas. She and several other sources say to wash boots and equipment after hiking anywhere on Maui. This is to help stop the spread of seeds from one infected area to others. But I will save that for another time, (maybe a HHT).
I visited ‘The Garden of Eden’. It is a private botanical garden that is off of the Hana Highway. I was not very impressed by the collection of plants. They were not very well marked and not in the abundance that I’m used to seeing. There was however a very cool collection of Bamboo.
I love this dark black with a little mossy edge. It is Bambusa lako ‘Timor Island’ or Timor Island black bamboo and gets up to 60 feet tall.
This one is giant about 50 feet high and about 6 inches in diameter.
This is so great with lovely green and white stripes.
This of course was not enough bamboo…. so off to the bamboo forest. This is near Hana at the Haleakala National Park. We took a trail that goes beside the ‘Seven Sacred Pools’, across the road and follows the stream up through the bamboo forest. So cool!
The bamboo overhead was a little intimidating as it moved in the wind. It gave off a spooky sound with clacking like one of those bamboo wind chimes only giant. Bamboo was definitely one of those visiting plants that came to stay. There are vast forests of bamboo that cover the hillsides.
Of course at the end of the hike is a great waterwall. In fact there were three, with water dropping in a free fall not just meandering down the rocks.
All in all the trip was great. I came back refreshed and ready to jump into the spring work that was awaiting my return.
