Natural History Natural History

LYCHEE
(Litchi chinensis)

When the first boat brought Chinese contract laborers to the sugar plantations in Hawaii in 1852, lychee was one of the Oriental fruit trees on board as well as longan, pummelo, and mandarin orange. It was apparently introduced into Hawaii in 1873.

The first tree planted on Oahu became known as the Afong tree. Kamaaina writer, Maili Yardley, says, the "original tree was first brought to Hawaii by Ching Chock and was planted on the Chun Afong property on School and Nuuanu Streets." The second tree was planted on Kauai and became known as the Wailua tree.

This fruit has been esteemed and enjoyed in the Orient for over 2,000 years. The first Chinese fruit culture book, written in 1056, was about the lychee. This fruit has the most sensuous reputation of all the tropical fruit. It is said that the Lady Yang Kuei Fei so loved lychee that T'ang Emperor Hsuan Tsung (AD 712 - 756) organized a "pony express" to carry lychee 500 miles on horseback from hot, southern Kwangtun (Guangdong) to the northern court for her.

In addition to China, they are also grown in Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan, India, South Africa, Australia and several places in the United States.

The name has been spelled in various ways but the standard "lychee" is now accepted by the University of Hawaii's Horticultural Department, following the spelling of botanist George Weidman Groff, a lychee specialist who lived in China for many years.

Lychee grows as a handsome, evergreen tree that can become 40 feet high. The dense, rounded canopy can extend nearly to the ground. The trunk is smooth and the leaves are divided into three or more leaflets up to six inches long. The young leaves start out coppery and change to a deep green.

The trees can grow to fifty feet. Some of the plants begin bearing fruit when they are five years old. Others do not bear fruit even though they are 20 years old. Normally the trees start bearing after five to ten years, reach their prime in 20 to 30 years and may continue producing for 50 years or more. (Some sources say 1,000 years!) In Hawaii, productive trees can bear 200 or more pounds of fruit from May to July.

In 1980 a lychee tree supposedly planted in the 8th century AD was found in Fukien Province in China, still bearing. The characteristics of the parent plant can be maintained through asexual propagation using air layering. (If this was done, the age is feasible.)

Lychee flowers are small and green-white. They appear on the tree in February and March. The flowers are borne in long clusters at the branch tips. The trees have female, male, and hermaphrodite flowers all on the same tree. Sometimes one sex, then another will predominate. This makes for a varying fruit harvest. In good years, the fresh fruit actually makes it into the supermarkets.
The fruits grow in clusters of three to 20 fruit at the tips of the branches. They are oval or round and about one to one-and-a-half inches in diameter. The brittle inedible, rough, reddish shell peels easily to reveal the lychee's pearly white, translucent flesh. Each fruit has a dark brown, inedible seed. The large brown seed is short-lived, dying four or five days after picking.

These seeds do germinate easily, but the quality of the resulting fruit is uncertain. This is why air-layering is the preferred method of propagation. In China, where the method was developed, some of the outer layer of bark is removed and damp sphagnum moss is placed around the area allowing the roots to grow in it and begin a new tree.

The flesh of a fresh lychee is fragrant, sweet, and juicy. The texture is similar to a grape's. The fresh fruit is a good source of ascorbic acid and phosphorus. Birds love the ripe fruit and are likely to raid the trees. When harvesting lychees, taking the whole cluster helps keep the shells from cracking and the fruit from bruising.

Many years ago, when the fruit was first available on the American mainland, it was dried since the fresh fruit is highly perishable. The dried fruit, called "litchi nut," came in fancy red Chinese boxes with lots of gold filigree. The outside of a peeled and dried lychee resembles a nut shell - brown and crinkly. The chewy texture and smoky taste of this dried fruit, similar to a raisin or a prune, has nothing in common with the fresh fruit.

The peeled fruit is also available canned. It retains the white color and grape-like texture, but nothing beats the flavor of a fresh lychee. If you're eating the fruit out of hand, it is best to remove the stem to create a hole that can be used to start peeling off the outer shell. It is a bit of a trick to pit the fruit and keep from tearing the flesh when you're making a special dish. Very often the flesh clings to the seed. Yardley recommends slicing off the stem end of the fresh fruit with a sharp knife before peeling the fruit, then carefully cutting around the pit with the tip of a vegetable peeler and lifting it out.

If you're lucky enough to have a good, heavy bearer, you can freeze the lychees. It is best to freeze them in the shell. Just bag the whole cluster - stems and all. Freezing causes the texture of the flesh to turn rubbery if it is frozen without the shell.

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Arts & Culture

BLACK ROCK

Pu'u Keka'a, "the rumbling hill," is an 85 foot high volcanic cinder and spatter cone, that stands in the center of the Kaanapali resort area. They call it "Black Rock". It divides the long stretch of sandy beach into two sections. The hill and the surrounding area is a many-storied place.
The area where the hill is located was once called Keka'a. One story-teller says, "Before 1802, in the time of King Keka'alaneo, Keka'a was the name given to the site of the original capital of the islands which now make up the state of Hawaii." The area was also the birthplace of Kaululaau, son of the King Keka'alaneo, the trickster-hero who defeated the numerous ghosts of Lanai and made that island a place where humans could live.

It is said that Pu'u Keka'a is a sacred place, a leina a ka 'uhane or "leaping place of the soul." Hawaiians believed that the soul of a dying person leaves his body and wanders about as the transition is made from this world into the next. If all of the person's worldly obligations have been fulfilled, his soul goes to Pu'u Keka'a (or some other such power place). Once there, the soul is taken by minor gods to another realm. At that moment physical death comes to the person's body. Every island has at least one leaping-off place for the soul. One source says the area was once a heiau and old burial grounds.

Abraham Fornander, who collected the folklore of the islands, says the spirits of the maka'ainana, the farmers and subjects of the chiefs, go to Keka'a; the souls of the chiefs go to the volcano when they die. He points out that this is the only instance where he encountered stories in which the souls of the farmers were admitted into the same realm as the chiefs.
According to Maui historian Inez Ashdown, in one cliff of Pu'u Keka'a there is a cave that is home to Moemoe, the God of Restful Sleep. His lover, Wao, the goddess of the water springs and of the upland forests, visited him often there. She was shy of mortals and would hide herself away from them, Ashdown said, and that is why one of the old names for the beach fronting Hanaka'o'o Beach Park was Wahine Pe'e or "Hiding Woman."
One legend tells of a road on the northeast side of Keka'a which is called "ke alanui kike'eke'e a Maui." Historian S. M. Kamakau says Maui, the demigod, was one of the ancient chiefs who made roads "twenty centuries ago." Most of Maui's roads were straight, he says, and the people were accustomed to running along straight roads. However, when certain people were hunting Maui to kill him, the chief made a number of roads that go zigzag and it was these that were called "crooked." Apparently Maui made the Keka'a road during one of the times he was being chased by assassins.
Another version of the story about the road is that Maui got mad at Moemoe for taunting and teasing the demigod when he was getting ready to snare the sun. After he had tamed the sun for his mother, Maui went looking for Moemoe, who was lolling about on the shore to the east of the Black Rock. Moemoe saw him coming and dodged Maui up hill and down until, at last, Maui was so angry he leaped onto Moemoe and killed him. The dead body, as happens in these legends, was transformed into a long black rock, which is "there to this day by the side of the road going past Black Rock."

In the early 1900s Pioneer Mill built a rock crusher near Hanaka'o'o Cemetery. The rock crusher had several large storage bins to hold the crushed material, including a box for sand. The sand box was kept filled with beach sand which was bagged as needed for different construction projects. In the 1920s the rock crusher shut down operations but the sand box remained on the beach for many years. Locals once referred to the beach as "Sand Box." There is a still-popular surfing break in the area that was also given that name.
Several bloody battles were fought in the area around Black Rock. Fornander said that when he was living there (from 1859 to 1872) human bones covered the sand, "as if thousands of people died there." He says that anatomy students from Lahainaluna School went there to find skeletons to study.
According to Fornander, there is a strange phenomena connected with the hill. People who went to the hill alone died mysteriously. He said that during the years he lived there, between 1859 and 1872, nine people died there without apparent cause. He tells a story about a number of people going from Kaanapali to Lahaina in the dark. When they came to Pu'u Keka'a, they said stones came rolling down the hill for no apparent reason. Old-timers nod their heads and tell you the place is haunted....or, at least, very strange.

At one time, there was a landing on the north side of Black Rock. It was built by the Pioneer Mill Company to ship out the sugar that was processed and bagged at the mill and hauled to the landing by train. The bagged sugar was stored in a warehouse to the rear of the Rock. The sugar boats waited as the bags were run out to the end of the landing on flatcars.

Other buildings in the area included oil and molasses tanks and a pavilion and beach cottages for the use of Pioneer Mill Company supervisors. At one time, too, there was a quarter-mile racetrack on the tidal flats to the rear of Hanaka'o'o Point which were used for horseracing on special occasions and holidays.

Just before World War II, the ruins of the landing were abandoned. The shipping operation was replaced by a more efficient, mechanized operation based at Kahului Harbor.

At dusk, an employee of the hotel built above the rock will leap off Pu'u Keka'a as the climax to the nightly torch-lighting ceremonies. They say it is a re-enactment of the famous leaps by Kahekili, Maui's last chief, who loved playing at lele kawa, leaping feet first from high cliffs into the sea below. His leaps from the cliff at Pu'u Keka'a were considered to be particularly brave since it was such a sacred place and it was believed that only a person of great spiritual strength could do this and survive.

Kahekili claimed to be descended from the god of thunder. This god was originally a man named Hekili, who lived in Papa'a'ea where thunder claps loudly and lightning strikes the forest. Hekili was, it is said, a person with great personal power, mana, because he was able to control the thunder and lightning and use them to destroy his enemies. If people even whispered about him, thunder boomed. Few people gossiped about Hekili.

After his death, Hekili was worshipped as a god. His devotees saw him appear as a figure whose right side was black from head to foot. Lightning wagged like a tongue, licking at the bushes and smoke rose as offerings from his worshippers vanished into the air. Chief Kahekili and his fierce company of warriors were all tattooed blue-black from hairline to toe with elaborate designs on the right sides of their faces and bodies.

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Braddah-Nics Lexicon

Local Grinds

Bibingka

A very special rice treat from the Phillipines.

Ingredients:

• 12 oz. freshly thawed, frozen coconut milk
• 5 1/2 cups mochi rice
• 1 lb. dark brown sugar
• some banana leaves

Procedure:

In rice cooker, cook mochi rice. Combine coconut milk and 1 1/4 cups brown sugar in saucepan. For approximately 20 minutes, cook over medium flame, stirring constantly, until a thickened mixture forms. Utilizing an electric stove or hotplate, wilt banana leaves over low heat. Line 1/4 sheet (9" x 13" x 2" rectangular) baking pan with wilted leaves. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place cooked rice into a large bowl. Set aside a 1/2 cup of coconut milk mixture, evenly combining remaining mixture and sugar with hot rice, in bowl. Place into leaf lined pan. Spread remaining mixture as topping on rice in pan. Place pan in oven and bake for 20 min., followed by a 5 min. broiling period. Remove from oven, let cool, cut into desired servings, and enjoy!

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