Earliest of the shower trees to bloom is the one which has come to be known in Honolulu as the Coral Shower, or sometimes as the Pink Shower. (But not to be confused with the later-blooming Pink and White Shower.) The Coral Shower flowers during March, April and May, its soft rose color and general appearance somehow suggesting pink coral. In effect this tree is strikingly like the blossoming cherries with loose upright limbs covered with pink flowers.
The flower buds are particularly attractive being rounded, velvety balls of delicate, pinkish lavender. The flowers hang in short racemes from the branches completely covering them in good specimens. Like the pink and white they have five petals, but are smaller and more evenly colored. Stamens and pistils project from the center. The leaves follow the first blossoms closely, the new foliage being pinkish. Leaves are pinnate, with the leaflets rather large. The pods are cylindrical and dark brown.
Unlike the other showers, which come from Asia, this tree is a native of tropical America.
Liholiho street, between Wilder and Lunalilo is bordered with these trees and a fine specimen stands on Punahou campus. ([Plate III])
RAINBOW SHOWER
Cassia hybrida
(Cassia javanica × Cassia fistula)
It probably was inevitable that sooner or later someone should try to cross the Golden Shower with one or the other of the two pinks. Fortunately this first took place some years ago, so that today the many “Rainbow Showers” resulting from this cross may be seen in all their breathtaking loveliness. They are among the most beautiful of all the flowering island trees, and no two are alike, unless propagated by grafting. In general, the inflorescence of these hybrids seems more numerous than on either of the parents, a result, no doubt, of combining the numerous flowers of the Pink and White with the spreading growth of the Golden Shower. At the height of their bloom, some of these trees appear to be almost solid with great fluffy masses of color.
Hues vary from palest cream and lemon yellow through all manner of peach and apricot tints to some that are a rosy orange. Flowers of individual trees often hold two tones, resulting in this variety of coloring. This is an effect that is enhanced frequently by the difference between the inside and outside of the petals, the buds being of a different color from the full blown flowers. There is a great difference, also, in the form of individual flowers.
There is considerable variation in the blooming period, but on the whole the Rainbow Shower trees come out later than the others, with July and August as the months of greatest bloom. They may be seen on Farrington street between Wilder and Beretania, and there are some fine individual specimens, one on Lunalilo street between Pensacola and Kapiolani, another on Makiki above Nehoa. A fine, clear, yellow flowering tree, sometimes mistaken for a pure Golden Shower, stands in Kamanele Park. ([Plate III])
YELLOW POINCIANA
Peltophorum inerme Roxburgh
A tree with many upright spikes of small, deep-yellow flowers, bright against the greenery of the fine-cut leaves is called the Yellow Poinciana, because it was once classed as a Poinciana. At the same time it is in bloom, it hangs full of reddish-brown pods which are one of its characteristic features. The flowers appear in the late summer and autumn, although there may be a second blooming period at some other time of year.