They also used the wood in medicine and placed it ceremonially in hula altars to represent Laka, the goddess of hula. The tree is still fairly common to the leeward side of the Big Island, at least in isolated patches. The same cannot be said of nearly all the rest of the native plants that once thrived there, when vast tropical dry forests covered the leeward slopes of all the Hawaiian Islands. Many of the islands are slowly degrading as an ocean of alien animals and plants, and the rogue fires that come with them, constantly batter their shores. But at this site, within earshot of the swish of cars and trucks speeding past on the island's Belt Road between Kailua and Waimea, Cabin and others have found reason for hope.
People focus on the rain forest all the time, but there was much higher diversity here.
It's just this little bread crumb of what was. The group is an informal partnership of state and federal agencies, non-government organizations, botanical gardens, and native Hawaiian and other volunteers. The group believes that dozens of endangered and rare species, mainly plants, can recover in this area once the overall structure of the forest is restored. With funding from various sources, the group is planting hundreds of nursery-raised seedlings of these and other endangered dry forest species among the naturally regenerating plants. They darted over a ridge and out of view.