Candlenut (Aleurites Moluccana) 15 Seeds Kukui is a tree 10 m tall or more with bark gray-brown to blackish. Leaves and inflorescence have a mealy-scurfy whitish to light brown indument. The small, five-petaled white flowers were chewed by the parents of a young child and given to the child to aid in healing of e'a (thrush) sores inside the mouth and upon the tongue. Also used for this problem was the juicy sap that fills up the depression left when the stem is pulled off the green fruit. This is applied with the finger and rubbed inside of the child's mouth and on the tongue. The leaves are simple and ovate or trilobed or rarely 5-lobed. Blades mostly 10-20 cm long, on an equally long slender petiole with 2 glands at junction of blade and petiole. The flowers are small, greenish-white, in panicles, with male and female flowers on same plant. The fruit is globose or bi-globose, with 1-2 large, heavy seeds. The green fruit is the part of the plant that contains the nut. This sap is also a healing application for chapped lips, cold sores and mild sunburn. One mashed nut (sometimes the raw kernel, sometimes the roasted) or the sap of the green nut was often used in combination with other traditional Hawai'i medicinal plants, particularly when a purgative for constipation was needed. The potency of this plant is so strong that these internal remedies are administered very carefully by those with experience in these matters. The late Uncle Harry Mitchell of Keanae recommended the use of Kukui nut for high blood pressure. He suggested one teaspoon a day of the ground roasted kernel. Sometimes this is mixed with pressed garlic juice. For bad cases of ulcers and other skin sores, the baked meat of ripe Kukui nuts was pounded and mixed with other plants, such as ripe noni fruit. Kukui tree ears two heavy crops each year. As food, a small amount of the pounded roasted nuts, plus salt and sometimes chili peppers, is used as a relish and is called 'Inamona. The bark, flowers and nuts are all used for medicine.