Easy-to-grow plumeria trees yield lei of sweet memories

I wore a fragrant yellow plumeria lei to dinner with my mom, Marilyn, and sister, Mimi. I had gotten it the night before at the Ka Palapala Po‘okela Awards, the annual Hawaii Book Publishers Association’s awards ceremony. It was the kind where the petals curve back. It was still perfectly fresh after being worn all night, then sprinkled with water and plastic bagged into the fridge.

So many people admired the lei, wanted to inhale the perfume and said how much they missed this simple classic lei.

Plumeria is a very easy tree to grow and maintain in Hawaii. Buy a tree from your favorite landscape nursery and plant it in the ground in a sunny place. You can grow plumeria in a big pot, but they really do better in the ground.

You can also grow them from fairly large cuttings. The old fashioned way was to cut the branch, and then stand it up next to the mother tree, letting the milky sap drain. Folks would say this is so the tree gets the idea of how to grow from the mama tree.

The modern way, developed by Dr. Richard Criley of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is to select a fairly large branch and girdle it with wire for a few months. This concentrates the plant sugars and rooting hormones in the branch. Cut the branch and plant it right away in the ground or in a large pot. Water it every day. Make sure the soil drains well. Plumeria grow and flower best in full sunlight.

We had several large old plumeria trees in our yard growing up and so did our neighbors. When lei day or Memorial Day or another special event was coming up we would pick plumeria, and we would go ask the neighbors if we could pick theirs.

Gathering was a big part of the fun and adventure. And asking people to share their flowers with us and let us pick them was a life lesson — to politely ask for something you want.

Then we would cool down and wet the plumeria flowers and find a nice shady place to string the lei. We then had to keep the lei cool in the fridge or the bathtub until we shared them at the event.

We found out that some varieties were easy to string (Samoan Fluff and Candy Stripe have nice big flowers), some lasted better (Graveyard Yellow and Kalakaua hold up well), some had a really nice color (Kauka Wilder) and some smelled so great (the fragile white beauty of Singapore).

I learned the hard way not to climb the trees but instead ask to borrow a ladder.

When I was in second grade, I broke my toe by climbing too high in Cathy Rosa’s tutu’s plumeria tree. I was showing off how high I could climb. Crack!!! The slender branches broke, and I thought her grandma or grandfather would be mad at me. I landed hard on the sidewalk but ignored the pain. Her grandma invited me to stay for dinner. Later limping up One‘ele Place in the rain, it really hurt.

My poor parents headed to the emergency room. I had a cast up to my knee for a broken toe, but I learned forever that plumeria branches are brittle.

Heidi Leianuenue Bornhorst is a sustainable landscape consultant specializing in native, xeric and edible gardens. Reach her at heidibornhorst@gmail.com.