Sometimes, there’s nothing so lovely as a classic hapa haole song. For us oldies especially, in keeping with this month’s atikala, it’s Song of Old Hawaiʻi by Beecher & Noble, copyrighted in 1937. “There’s the perfume of a million flowers, clinging to the heart of old Hawaiʻi.” Not many endemics are scented. Puapilo, maile, hōlei, ʻōhai, all come to mind.
Then, too, there are our gardenia. All smell slightly different. Kiele haole makes me sneeze. A lot. Nānū, and its hybrids with tiare, I don’t care for. But tiare … tiare has an inimitable scent. Unique, evocative, sigh-causing. And monoi, the classic tiare-scented coconut oil of Tahiti … monoi always went beach with me. A thin coating lets kai bead off, avoiding that salted-skin itch when getting dressed, and it’s great for the hair.
While nānū is a very rare endemic, we don’t know about tiare. Gardenia taitensis has long been emblematic of Tahiti. It apparently has origins on West Pacific isles, and may have been brought here very early. Both nānū and tiare provide dye for kapa and, of course, both, or all, are used in lei. Go! Go try smell! See if you can detect the subtle differences. And the real thing beats polymer clay any day!
