Where are you, kāmakahala flower? I suppose it depends what your search entails. Hawaiʻi is home to 19 lāʻau kāmakahala ʻāpaʻakuma, viny shrubby, with pointy-petaled small yellow pua.
The most recent kāmakahala (Geniostoma sp. formerly Labordia) to be described lives only on Kauaʻi, and is named for Clyde Imada of Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum. All delight in cool rains of mountain slopes, and their bright yellow pua, small but noticeable, say “Here I am!” Some say pua were gathered with care and strung into lei for aliʻi.
These days, perhaps because endemic pua kāmakahala are so rare, the name is used for similar-looking flowers of orange cestrum, a cousin in the Solanaceae family. Fashioned into delicate fragrant lei they are a precious gift, endemic or not, but be makaʻala! Cestrum are invasive, and our endemic species have enough pilikia as it is. Yes, “night-blooming jasmine,” here since the 1870s, can be a delight for the ihu, but at what cost? They belong to and in Central America, not competing with our lāʻau makamae.
