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!
