Koko Crater Botanical Garden

Next up we're visiting Oahu's Koko Crater Botanical Garden, in suburban Hawai'i Kai east of central Honolulu. I seem to have made a project out of visiting all the tropical plant gardens on the island, which I guess is fine since there really aren't that many of them: Five run by the city-county government, one by the local university, and a handful of other assorted ones. This one is fairly distinctive in that it's located inside the crater of Koko Crater, the steep volcanic cone that looms over Hawai'i Kai. I wasn't really expecting a lot from the place, given a lot of reviews I'd read of it, but I really enjoyed it; it focuses on dry-climate plants from Hawaii and around the world, including some deeply strange plants from Madagascar. Maybe this just isn't what people are expecting to see in Hawaii, but the whole state is a collection of endlessly varying microclimates, from some of the rainiest places on earth to arid desert conditions and high-altitude moonscapes, so it shouldn't be surprising that plants you might associate with Arizona also grow really well here (but maybe not at all a quarter mile away). Don't miss the plumeria grove if the trees are blooming, and remember to bring bug spray; mosquitoes ate me alive while I was here & I didn't realize it until later.

If you look up toward the rim of the crater you might notice tiny specks of people looking down at you. There's a trail up to the top, which I'll cover in the next post since a.) you can't easily get to it from the botanical garden, and b.) I did that trail on a later trip, well after visiting the garden. During the garden visit I had sort of concluded the trail looked insane and I'd probably never attempt it, but a bit later I did it and it was fine, and I hadn't quite gotten around to publishing this post yet so I didn't have any hasty opinions to walk back. I suppose that's one of the rare advantages to my somewhat... slothful approach to getting posts out the door these days. Hey, I take wins where I can find them.

Wahiawa Botanical Garden

A photoset from Wahiawa Botanical Garden, in a flash flood-prone ravine in the town of Wahiawa in central Oahu. The town's home to a huge army base & is otherwise surrounded by pineapple and (I think) sugar cane farms, so the garden is one of the very few reasons to visit if you don't live there. Apparently the garden began as a hobby of local plantation oligarchs who had nothing better to do, and eventually the county inherited it & has run it ever since. It's actually a very peaceful & scenic spot, if you can ignore all the signs warning that you might be swept away to your doom if it rains (and it rains a lot here).

Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden

Photoset from O'ahu's Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden, in Kane'ohe on the windward side of the island. It's not actually that amazing as far as tropical gardens go; if you want to go look at some tropical plants exactly once, the Foster Botanical Garden is the place to go. It's also quite car-oriented: It's a long walk from the closest bus stop, and within the park you mostly have to walk along the main road and hope drivers see you in time. Which I guess isn't surprising given that the place began as a 1980s Corps of Engineers flood control project (hence the big lake in the middle, behind a barely-disguised earthen dam.), so aesthetics and visitor-friendliness were not really the main drivers behind the project.

All of that said, I thought it was worth visiting anyway; it sits almost directly at the foot of the Ko'olau Mountains, and it was worthwhile just for the view. If you also think things can be worthwhile just for the view, you'll like this place, otherwise not so much. One surprising detail is what you don't see: There's actually a busy freeway between you and the looming sheer cliffs, along with a couple of golf courses, but somehow you don't see or hear any indication they exist, so maybe the Corps of Engineers gets credit for that particular detail. Or at least I didn't notice any freeways or golf courses. But I live near a busy freeway and am rather good at not noticing freeway noise, so your mileage may vary, I guess. A late great aunt of mine -- who had lived in Honolulu since the early 1930s or so -- once explained to me that the H-3 freeway was not only a pointless waste of money, it was also cursed, and she was determined to never drive on it. She got her wish, in a way, in that construction dragged out literally for decades (wiping out at least one species of bird in the process), and in the end she died of old age several years before the thing ever opened. I am not superstitious by any means, but she was generally a rather wise person, so I've never driven or ridden on the H-3 either.

Lyon Arboretum

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Here's a slideshow of the University of Hawaii's Lyon Arboretum, at the uphill end of Oahu's Manoa Valley, next door to Manoa Falls. It's at the same city bus stop as Manoa Falls, so it's just as easy to get to: Ride bus #5 to the edge of suburbia, get off and walk uphill, and follow the signs. Or, of course, you can just drive there if you have a car, which I didn't. Then go to the little visitor center next to the parking lot, drop a few bucks in the donation box, and get a map. You're going to need the map, because you'll probably get lost. I did, briefly, and I almost never get lost. Having a map at least gets you un-lost eventually. There's mobile phone service around the visitor center -- some of the plants in the adjacent garden even have QR codes to scan for more information -- but cell service quickly fades out once you're in the forest, sadly preventing me from going on an Instagram rampage while wandering around, or from checking Google Maps while I was lost.

I'd love to be able to tell you all about all the tropical plants here, or at least about the ones I have photos of. The place is kind of overwhelming, though. I spent a couple of hours here and felt like I'd barely scratched the surface. I skipped most of the various side trails and took the main trail to the far end of the arboretum, trying to find the waterfall. Which is a different, and much smaller (and less impressive) waterfall than Manoa Falls. This seems to confuse visitors a lot. I had a group of Japanese tourists ask me for directions to Manoa Falls, and they were a bit crestfallen to find out they were in completely the wrong place. I gave them directions and later ran into them on the Manoa Falls trail, and they thanked me for pointing them in the right direction. So I felt like I'd done my good deed for the day.

It would be really easy to spend an entire day here, taking it slow and just wandering around looking at things and filling up a memory card with flower photos. Though I'd recommend taking the Manoa Falls trail too, for contrast. If you only visit the Lyon Arboretum, you might come away thinking this is what a regular Hawaiian rainforest looks like, and not realize how much selective planting and pruning and manicuring has gone into it.

Most plants aren't labeled, so knowing your way around tropical plants would enhance the experience, I'd imagine. I was surprised to learn that a heliconia is not quite the same thing as a banana plant, if that gives you some idea of my inexperience with tropical plants. The arboretum specializes in heliconias, ginger plants, palms, and bromeliads, among other things, so it wouldn't hurt at least know what those look like.

Two items of practical advice. First, there are mosquitoes. Wear DEET, or cross your fingers and try some supposed DEET alternative, or wear long pants & sleeves and hope for the best, whichever option you prefer. Second, it rains a lot here. 165 inches per year, or nearly half an inch per day, on average. The arboretum is just a few miles up the road from Waikiki and downtown Honolulu, but it's not unusual to have torrential rain here while it's sunny at the beach. Oahu microclimates are like that. At least the rain isn't cold, and individual storms don't seem to last long, so you can sort of work around the weather and explore between downpours.

Foster Botanical Garden

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Here's a slideshow from the Foster Botanical Garden in downtown Honolulu. It's a large slideshow because the place kind of fascinated me. I was expecting to see (and photograph) a lot of flowers, but this botanical garden is focused more on trees. Enormous tropical trees, a grove of palm trees of all descriptions, and a whole section of commercial trees that produce products you vaguely knew came from plants, including black pepper and various other spices. I enjoyed visiting because almost everything was unfamiliar, but I later ran across a blog post by someone who enjoyed it for exactly the opposite reason: Having grown up in Jamaica, many of the plants here brought back childhood memories.

I already knew the garden had a baobab tree, and that was actually a big reason I decided to visit. It's possible I'd read The Little Prince one too many times as a kid, but I was absurdly pleased to see a real live baobab tree. Being in the middle of a stand of coffee trees was ok too. I posted a couple of Instagram photos from the coffee thicket so people back home in the rainy and coffee-mad Northwest could see what it's like, but I think that may have elicited more jealousy than curiosity.

There's also a strychnine tree, believe it or not, set well back from the path so visitors can't just walk up to it and give it a hug or lick it or something. It occurred to me that a botanical garden in Hawaii, featuring a bunch of toxic plants, and run by elderly volunteer ladies-who-lunch, would be the ideal setting for a series of cozy murder mystery novels. It's probably been done already. I haven't checked.

The garden does have a greenhouse with orchids and other smaller plants. I seem to have just missed the blooming of a giant corpse flower (so named because of its disgusting odor). This is probably just as well, as far as I'm concerned.

lyon arboretum (social media edition)

foster botanical garden (instagram)