Evening bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1895-1912, 1898-06-01
WILD FLOWERS OF HAWAII.

5JIHE idea, of the Tropics, of the
Jig average individual is derived
from two sources: the geog-
raphy of their callow youth, and
chance visits to Conservatives. This
idea is usually a rather tangled
vision of palms, bananas and tree
ferns, overrun with gorgeous Llama
and with an underground in which
every variety of rich, rare and I'M
usual flora run riot in a blaze of
color.
When the globe-trotter arrives in
Honolulu, after a week on the vastly
deep, and in a frame of mind when
anything in the shape of land would
look good to him, he is perchance
conveyed to some cool room, and
through the gorgeous bougain Villa
vine that wreatheS his windows,
gazes over the blazing tops of the
ponciana regia trees, Qike the scar
let umbrellas of some oriental mon
arch) up the beautiful Nuuanu Val
lev, where cloud and sunshine ever
vary over the purple heights, and
says to himself, "ThisiS theTropicS."
He is perhaps filled with a gentle
sadness, remembering the "long,
long, thoughts of youth and the
day-dreamS of warm Summer after
moons, when with head bowed over
the tattered Geography, the duSky
schoolroom with its droning classes
faded away and he saw a vision OF
an island "lying in purple spheres
of sea" circled with palms and
dreaming in an endless sunshine;
and signs a little in this realization
of his dreaming-thinking of the
"days that are not" and the other
dreams that never came true.
Afterward in the cool of the day
he drives through palm-lined streets,
past gardens gay with strange
flowers and with viStaS of bananas
and huge-leaved tropic plants, and
along roadsideS bright with scarlet
and gold lantanaS and under mango
trees loaded with their red-gold
apples, out to where the feathery
cocoanut groves battle their roots in
the gentle sea-and again signs with
delight-"At last, the Tropics"
He goes to Hilo on the regulation
trip to the volcano, and finds that
charming little town in this Lotus
land, "A land of streams, in which
it seemed always afternoon" with
glimpSeS at every turn Of banana,
palm and bamboo; he gallopS out
toward the woods, and long before
he reaches them he wonders little
"What has become of the flowers -
He rides past fields of rather yellow
iSh fodder corn, and a deluSion of
his youth is dispelled when he is told
it is sugar cane. In the geography
of our youth the cane was always
pictured as towering. at least fifteen
feet in air. Cane does sometimes
grow fifteen feet long, but when it
does it does Mt tower, it lies down to
rest in true Kanaka fashion. Reach
ing the woods, our traveller sees the
(occasionaD banana, but no palms,
(Save in plantationS), but plenty of
tree ferns and tall trees wreathed
with the ie-ie vine-not a flower
anywhere, unless by great good
luck he has arrived in the season to
see the ie-ie vine in bloom, or an
occasional ohia flower. Where, oh
where, is thewreath of bloom, the
orchids he was to pluck in handfulS,
the glorious maidenhair ferns and
wondrous growths he was to revel
in'-not a CLEAN of them anywhere.
In a trip along the Government
road through the outlying country,
one leaves the tropical flora behind