Yes! Hawai’i has its very own hydrangea. It’s called kanawao, or pu’ahanui, along with a few other names across the islands. Although it doesn’t look exactly like the ornamental hydrangeas we see around Volcano with their big blue bombs of flowers, they do share some similar characteristics. Like its domestic counterpart, kanawao has large, leathery leaves which are deeply etched. And its flower heads are also large. These flowers come in various shades of blue, pink and cream, similar to the colors we see in the non-native hydrangea. Kanawao’s flowers are either male or female, depending on the plant. If the female flowers are fertilized by a nearby male plant, then the resulting fruit will be red to maroon in color.
The scientific name for our native hydrangea is Hydrangea arguta. It was formerly known as Broussaisia arguta. In 2015 a new taxonomic treatment was published by scientists who decided to drop Broussaisia as a genus, which only had one species as its representative, and put kanawao into the larger genus Hydrangea. It has now joined up with over 100 other species in its new genus, right along the the big blue bombs all over the village.
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