Visiting Kauai -- Additional Impressions

I wrote about our April trip to Kauai a couple times. Here are some pictures from the trip that don't fit very well anywhere else.

I didn't mention the chickens. Chickens are all over the island. At first you think you're seeing them just outside someone's yard. Then you figure out that they are feral, like cats in cities. 

April was a good time to see hens with chicks. Generally the broods were large. Some were striking combinations white and black chicks in the same brood.  (read more on Kauai chickens). 

While chickens eat insects, they also eat leaves, flowers and seeds. In addition, they destroy plants with their pecking. It is likely that the outbreak of chickens is not a particularly good thing for the plants of Kauai, especially small ones and seedlings.

We visited the National Tropical Botanic Garden. (Well, a small part of it.)  The plant impressions in the pavement were grand:

The National Tropical Botanic Garden had some very neat plants...more than I can begin to do justice to here. Here are three favorites:

Frangipani (Plumeria) is a beautiful and fragrant plant. Across the tropics there are many species. In April in Kauai some species that lose their leaves annually were just coming into bloom:

frangipani plant

frangipani flowers

plus
a spectacular palm with orangy stems between dark green fruits 

and this very thorny tree, Pachira quinata. I can't find a Hawaiian common name for it: it is from Central America where they call it pochote or spiny cedar. (Click on picture to make it big to really see the spines).

We stayed at a cottage called 17 Palms. Actually there are more than 17 palms, the 17 refers to 17 royal palms (genus Roystonea). I liked it. It was quiet but centrally located, just across the street from the shore and with lots of flowering plants on the grounds, including those in the next two pictures:

a spider lily, probably a species of Crinum

the back fence at 17 Palms, likely Thunbergia grandiflora

And now -- scenic Kauai

We took a helicopter ride. We'd never done anything like that but had heard it was spectacular. It was.

Comments and corrections welcome.

Kathy Keeler

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