35 



ture lands is the lemon guava {Psidium guajava). Both the 

 guava and tht' Ian tan a form dense and almost impenetrable 

 shnil >1 >> thickets. 



There are few native Hawaiian plants thai are useful for 

 decorative landscaping purposes which succeed under the un- 

 natural conditions <>l cultivation. Through the efforts of various 

 individuals and organizations hundreds of species of tropical 

 and subtropical plants useful for their ornamental or other eco- 

 nomic value have been introduced during the last fifty years. 

 These plants have been widely distributed throughout the 

 islands where they have been planted in profusion about dwell- 

 ings and along the streets. Advertising billboards have been 

 banned from the roadsides and in their stead beautiful flowering 

 trees and shrubs have been planted. Honolulu is indeed "a city 

 built in a botanical garden," but the same could be truthfully 

 said of practically every community in the islands. The streets, 

 parks and private gardens present a year-round profusion of 

 varicolored foliage and blossoms on hundreds of varieties of 

 exotic plants. While there is an ever-present abundance of 

 flowers throughout the year, the finest display comes during the 

 spring and summer months. It is then that the avenues and 

 gardens put on a most gorgeous exhibition of flowering trees and 

 shrubs probably equalled nowhere else in the world. To enu- 

 merate the different species that one finds on a ramble through 

 the parks and gardens or along the streets of Honolulu would 

 result in a list of a very large number of the tropical and sub- 

 tropical species worthy of cultivation. 



Among the most abundant and conspicuous of the flowering 

 trees are the purple jacaranda, the several varieties of shower 

 trees (Cassias) with pink, pink and white, or yellow flowers; the 

 scarlet flame tree (Delonix regia) and African tulip trees (Spa- 

 thoda campanidata), the broad umbrella-shaped monkey pod 

 tree (Samanea saman) with its delicate pink blossoms, and the 

 yellow-flowered be-still tree (Thevetia nereifolia). Of the shrubby 

 plants the more common are the pink and the white oleanders 

 (Nerium oleander), the Plumerias with their pink or white star- 

 shaped flowers, the yellow candle bush {Cassia alata), the scar- 

 let Ixora, hundreds of forms of hibiscus, the scarlet and yellow 

 Poinsettias, and the christmas-berry trees {Schinus terebinth if o- 

 lins) with their red berries. Over walls and trellises or trees clam- 



