Visiting Kauai -- Native Flowers!

Last post I showed spectacular tropical flowers you can easily see in Kauai. (LINK) Those are from elsewhere in the tropics, brought to Hawaii because someone liked them.

Also in Kauai are native plants. It is believed that since the volcanic emergence of the Hawaiian Islands from the Pacific, 271 different plants have arrived without help from humans--as seeds, as pieces, traveling by bird, floating or on the wind--and established populations. From those 271 colonists, about 1200 species have evolved, spread over the Hawaiian Islands.  Here are some examples:

Visiting Kauai - Flowers!

The flowers of Kauai are lovely. Most of the easily-seen ones are non-native. For example

Visiting Kauai

eroded hills of Kauai

This spring, we spent most of a week on Kauai, Hawaii.

The north- and east-most of the major Hawaiian islands, it is the oldest. The 10,000 foot mountains it once boasted now reach only to 5243 feet. But that doesn’t make them inconsequential. In fact, erosion reduced the mountains without considering humans. Kauai has canyons and valleys that are not--just simply are not--accessible. The only way in or out is by helicopter. In good weather. Wow, an island of 552 square miles (one third the size of Long Island, New York, 1,401 sq. miles) with  places you cannot hike or climb to.

Dye Plant -- Colors of Red Cabbage

Many household products, such as coffee, tea and turmeric, are effective dyes. I have gotten good colors from spinach (link), but don't find much dye in iceberg lettuce or yellow cabbage. However, red cabbage, Brassica oleracea, turns the water a lovely shade and can be fun to dye with.

Unlike spinach, which gives colors from olive to yellow depending on the mordant, red cabbage is pH sensitive. That is the key to the dye project described below.

I started with one red cabbage.

Dyestuff: 1 red cabbage, Brassica oleracea

Visiting the Lesser Antilles--Dry Hillsides

The Caribbean abounds in cruises. We get on ships and sail over blue waters, the skies flecked with fluffy white clouds, picturesque islands in the distance. 

passing an island, Lesser Antilles

When we go ashore, there are big tropical plants with intensely colored flowers to marvel at.

Ixora with heliconias butterfly (black stripes)

But much of the Caribbean is very dry. Some smaller islands have no permanent water and some hillsides on other islands are virtual deserts. 

Plant story--Primroses, Primula--Post Script

Every subject I write about has far more information available than will reasonably fit into even two posts. (previous primrose posts 1, 2). Usually I keep it to two posts and save the rest for "someday." However, I can't resist sharing what I learned about the word thrum and the color primrose. 

First: what is a thrum?

The only place I'd ever heard the word thrum was in a graduate school botany class , for the flower form of primroses (link)--until I started weaving ten years ago. Thrums are the short ends that are cut off when a piece of weaving comes off the loom. From Dictionary.com: 1. one of the ends of the warp in a loom, left unwoven and remaining attached to the loom when the web is cut off." 

brown thrums hanging on the loom

Plant Story - More Reasons to Like Primroses, Primula

primrose, Primula

Primroses, genus Primula, are well-known European spring garden flowers. And wildflowers, since the common English name cowslips is probably from cowslops, --the common primrose, Primula veris, grew (and grows) well in English cow pastures. The English liked them as a sign of spring. (Link to previous post).

Which is probably why Charles Darwin and botanists before and after him, took a close look at the flower and discovered that there were two kinds of flower. Not two species, but two different flowers within a primrose species.