Review: Reprinted book on Hawaiian plants brings back old-time wisdom

The holidays are a perfect time to give back to the planet, and a new reprint of a classic book provides inspiration to learn about — and help preserve — Hawaii’s unique native flora and culture.

Originally published in 1992 and long out of print, “La‘au Hawai‘i: Traditional Hawaiian Uses of Plants” by ethnobotanist Isabella Aiona Abbott has been reissued by Bishop Museum Press in celebration of the author’s 100th birthday.

It is rich with black-and-white photographs of plants, artifacts, artworks and historic sites, and narrated in the lively, conversational voice of a favorite knowledgeable auntie.

This makes it not only easy to follow, but a timeless tool for the hands-on, experiential learning that is popular with Hawaii’s nature-loving citizens, young and old.

Each of 17 chapters opens with a quote in Hawaiian and English from kupuna such as Edith Kanaka‘ole and Nona Beamer. Topics include food, clothing, cordage, shelter, canoes, tools, housewares, medicines, religious objects, weaponry, personal adornment and recreation. Other chapters are dedicated to integral aspects of traditional life such as staple crops, and the use of native plants in hula and music; another focuses on limu (seaweeds and other aquatic plants), which was Abbott’s specialty.

We learn that, although limu was a staple food, certain varieties were forbidden to people who held certain beliefs. For instance, “Families that revered the shark as an ‘aumakua did not eat limu pakaiea because Hawaiians thought that very young sharks lived in a ‘blanket’ of this green alga,” Abbott writes.

When “La‘au Hawai‘i” was published, Abbott was a professor of botany at the University of Hawaii at Manoa; she was also an honorary research associate and a member of the board of directors at Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum and a professor emerita of biological sciences at Stanford University.

In 1997, she received a medal from the National Academy of Sciences.

Abbott’s sources included the early Hawaiian plant studies of W. T. Brigham, Bishop Museum’s first director, and J.F.G. Stokes, its first curator; the writings of 19th-century Native Hawaiian scholar Samuel Kamakau; E. S. Craighill Handy’s two studies of Hawaiian plants and Peter H. Buck’s volume on arts and crafts of Hawaii, as well as her mother and Mary Kawena Pukui, a family friend.

At a time when rapid ohia death is spreading throughout the islands, it is elegiac but hopeful that “La‘au Hawai‘i” wears Mary Anderson Grierson’s beautiful watercolor of a red- and yellow- blossoming ohia lehua on the its cover.

This beautiful book will make an inspiring and practical gift to every reader and naturalist on your list.

Purchase it at bishopmuseumpress.org or at Bishop Museum’s Shop Pacifica for $34.95.