One of the very special events in Honolulu’s floral calendar is the blooming of the Gold or Sunshine tree which grows on School Street, near Nuuanu. The time of year at which this takes place is highly uncertain, being sometimes in midwinter, again late in the spring. Certain other specimens of the tree are just as erratic, and none seems to have any relation to another, so that if the flowering period of one is missed, another may be found in bloom.
When not in bloom the Gold tree is rather ungainly in appearance, its smooth, slender, light grey trunk lifting the branches high in the air far beyond reach. But when the flowers suddenly appear on the bare branches, it seems like the touch of Midas, for they are shining masses of the purest gold, or like crystallized sunshine. The breathtaking color is intensified by the necessity of looking up at them against the vivid blue of a spring sky.
The tree is a member of the Bignonia family, and individual flowers are of typical Bignonia form, a slightly irregular tube with five lobes, irregularly margined. The leaves which appear after the flowers fall are, on older specimens, of compound form made up of opposite leaflets. On young trees the leaflets radiate from a common center.
The chief specimen of this tree grows in the Foster Gardens, now a public park, but originally the home of Dr. William Hillebrand, who must have planted it along with the many other novelties which he introduced. A second tree now grows across School street in a small nursery garden and a fine specimen is found in Moanalua gardens. Still another grows in the school grounds across from the Nuuanu YMCA.
It is a native of tropical America. ([Plate II])
ROYAL POINCIANA. FLAMBOYANT
Poinciana regia Bojer
Of all Hawaii’s flowering trees, the Royal Poinciana is easily the most stunning and conspicuous for sheer color and brightness. A solid mass of red, it is, nevertheless, not merely gaudy, but one of the most graceful and picturesque of trees, a flat umbrella of color in small specimens, or composing into long sweeping curves in larger ones. It suggests the massive regalia of some magnificent Oriental potentate. The color is most dramatic if viewed against a grey, valley raincloud in the late afternoon, touched by the level yellow rays of the declining sun.
The tree may become forty feet high, if growing under favorable conditions, but if the roots are cramped it remains quaintly dwarfed. Although bare for a short season in winter, the general flowering season of the Poinciana is long, for some trees begin to bloom early in spring, while others wait until late summer to open. June is the month when most of them are in bloom and the streets are consequently most gorgeous.
Individual Poinciana flowers, which have to be looked for closely to be distinguished in the masses of bloom at the end of the branches, have five petals. One of these is white, on the flag-red trees, or yellow on those tending toward scarlet coloring. These light touches give a piquant effect to the mass of color. Long, curved, brown pods hang on the tree for months after flowers and leaves have gone, and show that this tree is a member of the legume family.
The flowers usually appear on the bare tree before the new foliage comes out, but in a short time the leaves appear and for some weeks the green and red colorings remain together. The leaves are fernlike, bipinnate in form, with very small leaflets. Even when the flowers have fallen to form a carpet of red underneath the green tree, it is graceful and attractive.