This is a close up of the central new leaves of one of my Ohia trees, you can see the larger photo below...Liko Lehua means the "new red leaves" in this context...only the newest leaves have this rich plumy color and they soon loose it to be replaced with a nice bright green...
A favorite practice is to pluck these new leaves (must be similar to picking tea), and weave beautiful Leis from them, quite often these leis will be worn during parades by horse and rider alike, or for special Hulas...not all of the new leaves are the same shade, its always in the red family but it can range from red crayon to a dusty mauve and everything in between.This same tree gives us wonderful smelling firewood, fence post (its fairly straight growing), lovely feature post for supporting Lanai roofs, and gorgeous flowers for more Lei making! What a great all purpose tree!
5 comments:
wow! i though it's a flower at first. an all purpose leave :)
How cool!?!? The leaves look thick and hardy too so they probably won't wilt as easily.
Is that what we used to call a "rubber" tree plant? I never saw new leaves on it like that and besides that was in the 1940s and was my mom's plant in the house.
A nice photo and interesting story behind it.
Abraham Lincoln
Brookville Daily Photo
That close up shot is great.
Nope Abraham, sorry but it is not a rubber tree plant (and now I can not get that song outa my head!;), it is a Ohia which is endemic to Hawaii.
Yes the leaves are very thick and sturdy, it takes them a very long time to dry out so they stay looking nice for quite awhile...I did not even see the repeating theme of the arch until I got the shots loaded to the computer...how lucky was I? If I had stood on the other side of the tree it would not have happened...
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