ohi'a lehua — 2015 — The 21st Century Matriarch

Lava Tree State Monument is a small park with a loop trail. The lava trees (molds of tree trunks formed when lava flowed through a forest) are older than the ones seen along Chain of Craters Road. Many of them were upright – look like totems, the hollow from where the tree trunk once was not visible.

Many of the ohi’a lehu trees has ferns growing and other epiphytes growing on their shaggy trunks – those plants providing more green than the leaves from the tree.

I had not seen mushrooms or shelf fungus in Hawaii until Lava Tree State Monument…and here they were brilliant orange. They reminded me of dried orange peel.

Sometimes the trees must have been horizontal when the lava surrounded them. Some of the lava trees are mini-communities of small plants, lichen and moss.

I was always startled by the orchids that thrive just about everywhere on the wet side of the island (i.e. the Hilo side…the Kona side is too dry for tropical plants except where extra water is provided by the resorts.

Some of the lava trees are overgrown but the black – almost shiny – lava makes a stark contrast to the green plants.

The route to the monument passes through Pahoa, the small town that was threatened by a lava flow in October-November 2014.

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The first small hikes that we did at Volcano National Park were two that share a parking area: Thurston Lava Tube (Nahuku) and Kilauea Iki.

The first is a trail that goes through a lava tube. My pictures of the lava tube did not turn out (lighting was too dim) but it was interesting to see the marks on the sides of the tube from the lavas that flowed through it. Along the way I saw colorful birds (this on might be an Apapane in the forest

And ferns and moss that are colonizing the lava at the entrance to the tunnel.

The hike to Kilauea Iki – a cooled lava lake – begins at the rim of the crater in the rainforest. The path proceeds down a series of switchbacks. The ferns are at eye level.

I captured quite an array of fiddleheads – purple, green, encased in a brown husk, hairy.

And then the trail emerges from the forest onto the lava lake. The trail here is marked with stakes of rocks on the undulating terrain of solidified lava. Do you see the people along the trail? That provides a sense of scale for the place. The lake was formed in 1959 – so a relatively young volcanic feature.

Ohi’a lehua have colonized the edge of the lava lake.

Ohelo are there as well. This one does not have any red berries. The Nene (Hawaiian goose) evidently like the berries.

The Ae ferns area also hardy colonizers of the lava.

At one edge of the lava lake there are steam vents.

We didn’t hike all the way across the lake…climbing back up the trail to the parking lot through the forest. Here is the view from after we reached the top.

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Getting to Hawaii