104 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



inches broad. The vine climbs to a height of twenty to thirty 

 feet, and drapes the forest with its luxuriant foliage and bou- 

 quets of flowers. 



A brilliant flower of the dense woodlands is the scarlet 

 ka-iwi {Strongylodon lucidum). This is a high-climbing 

 woody leguminous liana, with herbaceous branches. It adorns 

 the tree trunks in the shady forest with its graceful foliage, 

 shot here and there with the pendant flaming racemes, which 

 are ten to eighteen inches long. The flowers are like those of 

 the bean or pea in form, with a showy reflexed standard, and 

 a long scimiter-shaped keel. This last peculiarity has given 

 the native name nuku-iwi, which compares the keel with the 

 long curved beak of a Hawaiian red bird. The leaves of the 

 ka-iwi are glossv and three foliate. This lovely vine occurs only 

 in the humid forests, at elevations of from one thousand to 

 three thousand feet above the sea. It is of marked beauty and 

 certainly merits horticultural study. 



Our Hawaiian species of hibiscus constitutes one of the 

 most beautiful floral groups of the lower and middle forest 

 zones. There are five species, all with large showy flowers — 

 white, pink, red, and yellow — usually solitary and axillary. 

 The cosmopolitan hait tree (Hibiscus filaceous) a sprawling 

 littoral species, has rich yellow flowers, with a. purple brown 

 center. As the flowers wither they become suffused with red. 

 The akia-hala (H. Youngianus) with pink flowers two inches 

 long, is a small undershrub occurring in marshy places and 

 abandoned taro patches on the lowlands and in the valleys. 

 H. Brack enridgei, a shrub of four to five feet, with deciduous 

 spines and conspicuous yellow flowers, shows preference for 

 the semi-arid leeward ridges. The white kokio (H. Anwt- 

 tiuinis) is a tall shrub or small tree, ten to twenty-five feet, 

 plentiful along stream-beds in the upper valleys and ravines 

 throughout the rain-forest. The flowers are four or five inches 

 long, with an exserted red staminal column of four to six 



