This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Leaves, Autumn or Spring.’ See more responses here. Here are some leaves from Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden with captions on the photos.
Tropical leaves
Category Archives: Plants
Bees on palm flowers
I was watering my coffee plants, early one morning, when I heard a loud buzzing noise. I looked up and saw bees all over the flowers of a palm tree on the edge of the yard. To be honest, I hadn’t noticed the tree had flowers as they’re rather dwarfed by the profusion of fronds. But there are a lot of these small yellow flowers and the bees obviously approve.
An ominous sight
This photo doesn’t look much different in black and white than it does in color. Happy Halloween!
Roma Tomato Tree
These are the fruits of a palm tree, not sure which kind. I was hoping someone would walk by so that I could say, ‘Looks like this Roma Tomato Tree has a good crop coming along.’ Alas, life is full of little disappointments.
Cat in a Kiawe
I was impressed to see one of our cats at work, looking comfy on a branch of the large Kiawe tree in the yard. The tree is not only studded with vicious thorns, but is also home to a colony of ants that might outnumber the human population of the island.
Cattleya Labiata orchid
There are many things to like about this orchid. It’s a beautiful flower. It’s an epiphyte, growing on the trunk of a tree. It hosts a small hover fly, which I didn’t notice at the time. And it has a handy tag attached, identifying what it is, which I also didn’t see until later.
There’s an interesting story about the discovery of this flower here.
Kohala Ditch
The Kohala Ditch was built in the early 1900s to carry water from the wet slopes of Kohala Mountain, to the sometimes drought-prone sugar cane fields of Kohala. A series of tunnels, flumes and ditches channeled water through ridges and over gullies for a distance of 14 miles.
After the sugar cane industry folded, ditch water continued to be used by other agricultural activities. But this valuable resource was always beset by difficulties. The challenging landscape was prone to landslides and flooding. Flumes were washed away, tunnels blocked. Increasingly expensive and time-consuming repairs did not provide the same economic benefit they once did.
After one such event, a few years ago, the operator of the ditch said it would no longer be repaired and maintained.
The top photo shows a section of the ditch in 2016. The others show how it looks today, in places, overgrown with weeds and even trees. In some areas it’s more manicured by those living next to it. In the meantime, access to water is a considerable problem, especially as dry weather is increasingly common in the area.
The current Governor of Hawaii knows this region well and money has been earmarked for finding a solution to the area’s water shortage, but when and how that happens is still very much in the pipeline!
For more information about the history of the Kohala Ditch, go to fluminkohala.com/the-kohala-ditch.
Monarch Butterfly caterpillar
A Monarch Butterfly caterpillar munches along the edges of an Hawaiian Crown Flower (Calotropis gigantea).
Graham's Island 