HOSMER GROVE CAMPGROUND AND PICNIC AREA
A quarter mile above the park entrance, opposite the driveway to the inn, a paved lane, one-half mile long, leads to the Hosmer Grove Campground and Picnic Area. It has a shelter for rainy weather that contains two tables and two charcoal burners. Four additional tables with adjacent charcoal burners are in an open site below the road. Running water, parking space for eight cars, and sites for pitching tents are provided. Charcoal may be purchased at the inn. A self-guiding nature trail leads through the grove.
HOSMER GROVE
CAMPGROUND AND PICNIC AREA
The grove was named for the first Territorial forester, Dr. Ralph S. Hosmer, who experimented with planting temperate trees at high altitudes on Haleakala and Mauna Kea. Trees, planted here in 1910, include the deodar, Cedrus deodara from the Himalayas; the tsugi, Cryptomeria japonica from Japan; eucalypti from Australia; and from the mainland a cypress, Cupressus arizonica; a juniper, Juniperus virginiana; Douglas fir, Pseudotsuga taxifolia; incense cedar, Libocedrus decurrens; two spruces, Picea canadensis, P. excelsa; and seven pines: lodgepole, Pinus contorta, Coulter or big-cone, P. coulteri, Jeffrey, P. jeffreyi, longleaf, P. palustris, ponderosa or western yellow, P. ponderosa, white, P. strobus, and Scotch, P. sylvestris. Many of these have survived and have borne fruits. The huge keeled cones of Coulter pines are cherished as ornaments in some homes.
Native plants associated with the area are the shrubs: Haleakala sandalwood, mamane, pukiawe, aalii, mountain pilo, ohelo, silver geranium, kupaoa; two or three ferns; two sedges; and three native grasses.
Two thirds of the distance to the grove, the crater trail from the inn starts up the mountain to the left. This is a connecting link, 1¾ miles long, to the Halemauu Trail which it joins a half mile below its start on the highway. See Numbered Points of Interest, [No. 9].