Rainbow shower trees, a source of shade, beauty and a lot of rubbish,
are celebrated on July 27. Photo byKen Ige, Star-Bulletin
On July 27 the Outdoor Circle will celebrate the city's shower trees with a festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Kapiolani Park, and Foster Garden will offer their annual Midsummer Night's Gleam from 8 to 11 p.m.
While both are unique to Hawaii, they are about as different as two free public events can be. The festival will include arts and crafts, children's activities, entertainment and a plant sale in a busy, energetic environment.
The magical Midsummer's Night Gleam, now more than 20 years old, is a quiet time in a moonlit garden where the only other light comes from thousands of candles. Despite the fact that the garden is located at 180 N. Vineyard Blvd. between downtown Honolulu and the freeway, it seems a world apart.
This year's theme is 'Festival of Lights,' featuring celebrations of various ethnic groups and religions using fire or the light from fire in their traditions. Each will be in its proper garden setting.
The Asian festivals of Tanabata - honoring ancestors whose temporary abode is a bamboo grove - and Bon, welcoming the visitation of ancestors, will be held in the garden's bamboo planting.
The great Bo tree will shelter a ritual fire of the Hindu religion. The tree is also sacred to the Buddhist religion. Foster Garden's Bo or peepul tree is a second generation offset of the tree in Bihar, India, under which Buddha achieved enlightenment.
It was sent about 100 years ago to Mary Foster, founder of the garden, by the monks of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka.
Foster had earlier converted to Buddhism and made substantial gifts to charities in Sri Lanka, so the monks set her the sapling in gratitude.
According to Paul Weissich, former director of the garden, the Bo tree at their Buddhist temple "is possibly the oldest historical tree in the world, having been brought as a young rooted offset of the original Budh Gaya tree in 288 B.C."
Foster Garden's present director, Michael Kristiansen, recommends a stroll through the Prehistoric Glen, a cycad garden, which has recently been improved by, gulp, the removal of huge tree. In some circles, to remove a tree in a botanic garden is akin to fishing in a public aquarium. "No plant is ever removed from the garden," Kristiansen quickly explained, "until it is determined that it is not the only specimen in the garden, and it is air-layered so that the same genetic pool remains to be replanted. What we took out was a Kleinhovia hospita (Guest tree), only after we made four air-layers.
"It was dropping leaves into the crowns of the cycads in the Prehistoric Glen, which is unhealthy for them, and it created too much shade." By removing the tree, which is neither endangered nor particularly unusual, the glen is more accessible and the view is opened. (This same philosophy can be used in many home gardens where a tree, simply because it's there, is allowed to overwhelm the property.)
Cycads are among the most ancient of all plants surviving today, and are unrelated to any other in the plant kingdom. They grew most profusely in the Mesozoic Era, the time of the dinosaurs, and they are a staple background in prehistoric monster movies like "Jurassic Park."
To walk in the candlelight through the Prehistoric Glen is a magical experience. If you look straight ahead around you, you see nothing but the world as it looked 200 million years ago. If you look up, you see the lighted apartments and office buildings of downtown Honolulu.
Earlier on July 27, the Outdoor Circle will sponsor the Second Annual Shower Tree Festival in Kapiolani Park. The rainbow shower became the official tree of Honolulu in 1965 as part of a campaign to promote Honolulu as "The City of Flowering Trees." Somebody, possibly from the rubbish collectors, has downscaled the program and you don't hear of it any more.
The original rainbow shower tree was a chance seedling from a tree growing on Lunalilo Street. In about 1920, the seedling was planted and grew to maturity in the garden of Wilhelmina Tenny. The flowers are red, yellow and white, but sunlight blends the colors to pink and orange. Blossoms appear from April through November, but are at their height now. The tree grows best in the warmer, drier areas of Oahu. Because it can attain a height of 50 feet, it is rarely used in home gardens and seen most often in public plantings.
So consider turning off the TV a week from tomorrow - which may be only flag-twirling and lady's weight-lifting anyway - and enjoy Oahu's summer beauty.
