Pua kenikeni, a favorite garden and lei plant, is not native to Hawaii, nor did the ancient voyagers bring it on their great voyaging canoes.
It got to Hawaii only in the late 1800s and became widely popular in about 1920. It was given the name pua kenikeni (10-cent flower) because the fragrant flowers were so highly prized that they sold for 10 cents each.
The first pua tree in Hawaii was planted in Maunawili. It was propagated and shared on the Windward side of Oahu where it grows well given some good horticultural TLC. It became known as the flower of Kaneohe in the early days.
My mom and I got to visit what is probably the original tree. It was quite a sight to see! My calabash Uncle Ben could be called Mr. Pua Kenikeni. He has nurtured this tree and made hundreds, if not thousands, of offspring through air-laying propagation to share over the years.
Pua kenikeni do best in the ground, in fertile soil with regular water. They prefer red dirt or rich, brown, forest-type soils rather than sandy soils.
The tree is mentioned in the classic book "Na Lei Makamae" by Marie McDonald, who writes it was brought to Hawaii from other South Pacific islands by Jarrett P. Wilder.
You can grow it from seeds, but that will take a while. Some people can grow it from cuttings, but the most popular way to propagate pua kenikeni is from air layering, which involves cutting away a piece of the bark near a shoot and packing the "wound" with wet moss or other medium that is then sealed in plastic. Once enough roots sprout from the cut site to sustain the shoot, it is cut from the tree and planted.
Regular water and compost from leaves or tree chips will build healthy, fertile soil for your tree. Cheap chemical fertilizer, especially lawn fertilizer with heavy nitrogen (the first number on the fertilizer bag), will not promote blooming. You can even burn or kill pua kenikeni with harsh chemical fertilizers, so employ the old-fashioned Hawaiian soil-building techniques of reusing your garden "opala" (green waste) to build up your soil and save water, too.
Keep your tree pruned low and wide-spreading so you can pick the flowers. You can use a bonsai technique and bend the branches low while they are young and flexible. I’ve seen some akamai lei flower growers use pretty pohaku (rocks) on a rope to weigh the branches down and train them to be in pickable range.
Pua kenikeni flowers first open and bloom creamy white, and turn to a subtle light orange on the second day. You can pick mature buds or flowers and keep them fresh and firm in a vase of water.
The flowers are somewhat fragile and lei makers need to handle them carefully. Uncle Ben told me a neat technique that one of his friends uses. He takes a big leaf, makes some puka and inserts the pua into the puka. He then carries the flower-adorned leaf and gives away the fragrant blossoms to folks who admire them. Isn’t that an awesome way to share some aloha?
Lei makers usually clip off the bottom green part of the flower and then string the lei.
To refresh a lei pua keni-keni, put it in a clear plastic bag, blow some air in the bag and seal it. Float this in a bowl of cool water. Never put pua kenikeni in the refrigerator; the lei will not last.
To promote flowers on your tree, clip or pinch off the developing fruit, which look like green balls and then turn orange when ripe. If you cut open a ripe fruit you will see hundreds of small black seeds inside. It kind of looks like the inside of a cut papaya — orange flesh and black seeds.
I sometimes clip off bunches of the green or orange fruit with their stems and use them for a long-lasting flower arrangement. I love them for fall arrangements and they are pretty at Christmastime, too.
Heidi Leianuenue Bornhorst is a sustainable landscape consultant specializing in native, xeric and edible gardens. Reach her at heidibornhorst@gmail.com.
