After seeing a lei garden at Waimea Falls Park, I started noticing lei flowers along my runs in my neighborhood. In this process, I also gained a new appreciation for the beauty of the simple Plumeria which I think I just took for granted. There are so many varieties and it is such a simple flower with beautiful radial symmetry. Consequently I decided I had to do a blog on lei flowers highlighting flowers from neighborhood yards!
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Yellow Plumeria / Aiea Heights neighborhood / April 2016
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There is nothing which epitomizes Hawaii and Aloha more than a lei! They are such an exquisite and personal gift. The lei is given for so many different occasions and is given with all the range of possible positive feelings.
Beyond their beauty as a gift is the unbelievable talent, patience, and creativity that has gone into the making of the lei. When I see, up close, the many different lei flower growing in yards, I wonder at how anybody has the patience to gather all the flowers, let alone construct the lei! I know for the commercial production of lei, people are harvesting from vast fields or gardens but I know of some people that make complicated lei just from their backyard flowers.
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| Cigar flower plant / Aiea Heights neighborhood / April 2016 |
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| Cigar flowers / Aiea Heights neighborhood / April 2016 |
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| Pikake plant with buds / Aiea Heights neighborhood / April 2016 |
Look at the flowers to see how hard it must be to work with these small and sparse components. (I do realize my pictured plants have a little less flowers due to our recent dry weather.)
I cannot even imagine how the small flowers or buds are even made into the beautiful lei!
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| Yellow Plumeria / Aiea Heights neighborhood / April 2015 |
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| Yellow Plumeria / Aiea Heights neighborhood / March 2015 |
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| Crown Flowers / Aiea Heights neighborhood / March 201 |
The most common homemade lei (or at least from my childhood experiences) are Plumeria and Crown Flowers. Probably the most common Plumeria lei is made from the yellow Plumeria flower.
[When I began to research to find names of Plumeria, I found some great sources and an interesting story of a man who developed, and sells, many Plumeria varieties. In the process of my research I decided I would simply call the Plumeria by color in fear of incorrectly identifying what I photographed!]
There are so many beautifully colored Plumeria, you would be lucky to get a lei made from some of the less common flowers. I remember red Plumeria from my childhood but rarely see those flowered trees.
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White Plumeria / Aiea Heights neighborhood / April 2016
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| Tri-colored Plumeria / Aiea Heights neighborhood / March 2016 |
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| Tri-colored Plumeria / Aiea Heights neighborhood / April 2016 |
There is also a Plumeria flower that doesn’t lend well to a lei as the petals naturally bend backwards.
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| White Plumeria (bending petals) / Aiea Heights neighborhood / March 2016 |
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| White Dendrobium Orchid / Aiea Heights neighborhood / April 2016 |
The most common commercially made lei, is probably the Orchid lei. The variety and complexity of the many Orchid lei are amazing. Examples of beautiful orchid lei Although my photos may not both show lei Orchids, I wanted to include some “backyard” orchids just to represent this intricate flower.
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| Antelope Dendrobium / Aiea Heights neighborhood / April 2016 |
Some less common lei, but common backyard flowers, are the beautifully subtly fragrant, Puakenikeni, the vined Stephanotis, and the stunning African Lily. Puakenikeni is a wonderful flower whose colors change as the flower gets older on the tree. You are greatly honored if you receive a Puakenikeni lei.
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| Puakenikeni / Aiea Heights neighborhood / April 2016 |
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| Puakenikeni / Aiea Heights neighborhood / April 2016 |
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| Stephanotis vine / Aiea Heights neighborhood / April 2016 |
Stephanotis is less commonly used but I did find lei for sale from some sources.
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| Stephanotis flower / Aiea Heights neighborhood / April 2016 |
I have not seen the African Lily (Agapanthus) lei sold but I have received some beautiful full lei made from it - in two different ways!
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| African Lily cut flowers / Aiea Heights neighborhood / May 2006 |
An incredible woman I know is a master lei maker. One year, she won an award at a Lei Day lei competition. She showed me a photo of the awe inspiring lei and described to me how she constructed a lei in shades of green and gray using the ʻŌhiʻa trees from her backyard! [I have only ever seen one ʻŌhiʻa tree in my neighborhood and now it is gone.]
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| ʻŌhiʻa flowers / Hawaii Volcanoes National Park / February 2016 |
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| ʻŌhiʻa buds / Hawaii Volcanoes National Park / February 2016 |
But as a tribute to my friend's lei, I have included some, “in the wild,” Big Island ʻŌhiʻa tree flowers and buds. [To see some beautiful lei and to learn more about this celebration go to the Facebook page for The City and County of Honolulu's Annual Lei Day Celebration!]
As always “watch out for nature,” and see how many lei flower plants you can see or how many flowers you could imagine in a lei!
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