FLORA OF THE GROUP. 211 



to which it belongs, often growing twenty-five feet or more in height. It 

 prefers the bold, rugged valley slopes and is a marked tree wherever it occurs. 

 Its thick trunk branches freely and roots are sent out above the ground, so that 

 the tree very much resembles the lauhala in this respect. The leaves, which 

 are two feet or more in length, are born in crowded tufts at the ends of the 

 branches, leaving the trunk and stem rough with leaf scars and marks of slow 

 growth. 



The botanical name Dracaiia, meaning a 'she dragon,' was given the genus 

 to which the Hawaiian species belongs because of the dragon's-blood resin of 

 commerce which exudes from the bark of certain species, a character shown to 

 some extent by the sap bark of the native species. The old-time Hawaiians 

 carved some of their hideous idols out of its soft, white wood. 



Another plant peculiar to the lower woods, that extends its range far 

 beyond the line arbitrarily assigned for the upper limit of the zone, is the 

 ieie,* a climbing shrub with many of the habits of its cousin, the lauhala. It 

 needs no introduction to the forest rambler. Climbing over the tallest trees 

 or trailing on the ground, it often forms impenetrable thickets. The rigid 

 stem is about an inch in diameter with numerous climbing and aerial roots. 

 The stiif rough leaves, from one to three feet long, are crowded into a tuft at the 

 ends of the stems. The male flowers are on two to four cob-like cylinders five 

 or six inches long by less than an inch in diameter and are surrounded by a 

 whirl of rose-colored leaf bracts. They are among the more showy blossoms of 

 the woodlands. From the pendant roots the natives formerly made ropes of 

 great strength and durability. 



It is usually at about this elevation that the koa ° is first met with, though 

 it does not attain its maximum size and importance as a forest tree until well up 

 in the middle forest zone. Hillebrand recognized two closely related species 

 and several varieties ; while the cabinet makers, basing their classification en- 

 tirely on the character of the wood, recognize a dozen or more as curly" koa, 

 red koa, yellow koa, and so on, all of which are collectively called Hawaiian 

 mahogany, owing to the superficial resemblance which the wood bears to that 

 well-known cabinet material. Mahogany, by the way, is a native of Central 

 America and the West Indies, and belongs to an entirely different order of 

 plants, of which the introduced Pride of India is an example, but an order of 

 which there are, so far as known, no representatives in the native flora. 



The koa is a tree of rare beauty with its laurel-green, moon-shaped, leaf- 

 like bracts. The tree often attains a height of sixty to eighty feet, with enor- 

 mous trunks frequently six to eight feet in diameter, and mth wide-spreading 

 branches. Canoes seventy feet long were made of a single trunk; it was in such 

 canoes that Kamehameha the Great made his conquest of this group and contem- 

 plated using them in a war-like expedition to the Society Islands two thousand 

 seven hundred miles distant. 



In addition to the many uses made of the wood by llie natives in making 

 canoes, calabashes and the like, it has long been esteemed as one of the choice 



• * Frcycinetin Arunlti. ^Acacw Eon. 



