A recipe published in a recent edition of the Crave section of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser mentioned sumac as a tangy spice used to finish a chicken and artichoke dish that sounded divine.

While that sumac is a different species of plant from the same family, it brought to mind the saving of neneleau, or Hawaiian sumac, at the Ho‘omaluhia Botanical Garden.

BACK IN the late 1970s, Ho‘omaluhia Botanical Garden was being developed as a flood control project by the Army Corps of Engineers. An amazing side benefit of the project was the creation of a 400-acre botanical garden in wet lowlands, an ecological niche that we at the Honolulu Botanical Gardens had long been looking for. The land often had abundant rain, and sometimes a 100-year flood.

One day early on in the project, Honolulu Botanical Gardens Director Paul Weissich was walking briskly ahead of the bulldozers and shouted, “STOP!! Rare native Hawaiian plants ahead!!”

Thanks to his good botanical eye, we ended up saving a small grove of neneleau from being bulldozed and taken to the dump. The plant had never been reported on Oahu before, but we were able to nurture this population of an unusual Native Hawaiian plant.

Working with the Army Corps of Engineers was interesting to put it mildly. They were following their specifications and hauling away “waste organics,” which meant the rich, organic leafy topsoil. They packed and graded the wet soil with heavy equipment — the compact soil made it very hard to grow the rare and unusual plants we wanted to cultivate in the garden.

Naturally, after the botanical garden was all planted, we had a 10-year drought.

NENELEAU is in the mango family, Anacardiaceae. Rhus sandwicensis is its scientific Latin name. Another Hawaiian name is neleau. Neneleau is the only Native Hawaiian plant in the Anacardiaceae plant family.

Many poisonous plants like poison ivy, poison oak and poison sumac are also in this family. Christmas berry is related. Edible plants from the same family include cashews, pistachio nuts and mangoes.

Neneleau is a pretty plant with striking new leaves (liko) that can display a range of colors from a pinkish orange and light pink to mauve and magenta, and all shades in between. Older leaves are light to dark green. Flowers are a cream color, which are followed by reddish fruit. The plant is grown from root suckers. So at the botanical garden, we always mowed carefully so as not to mow down any new keiki root suckers.

We had to do lots of weed control at the Ho‘omaluhia Botanical Garden (always carefully around the neneleau), as the area had been a failed pineapple farm and a tropical plant nursery.

NENELEAU is not a common plant. But once you have the eye for it, you see it here and there in Hawaii. There are nice tree-sized specimens at the overlook to Waipio Valley on Hawaii island and you’ll also see it in the gulches as you drive from Waimea to Hilo.

Calabashes were made from neneleau wood. The light but tough grayish-yellow wood was also crafted into saddle trees, the wooden base that a Hawaiian-style Western leather saddle is molded around.

We should investigate the value of the wood for calabashes, woodcrafts and other uses. (Mango is gorgeous to work with, so maybe neneleau is epic!)

I do wonder if the Hawaiian species can be eaten or used as a spice or medicine?

Neneleau is a plant that we should grow more of to find out. It would be such a pretty and uniquely colorful addition for our Hawaiian home gardens, parks and schools. Who doesn’t like more shade?

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