McBryde Gardens and Wine & Cheese on the Lanai

Good morning to you all! While this is not quite the view from the bedroom window....it's not far away and a great way to start the morning.


Today we headed to the McBryde Garden's, part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, located in the Lawa'i Valley in Po'ipu. Early uses of the valley included Kalo (taro) cultivation, which was replaced with rice by Chinese and Japanese immigrants. In the late 1800 until 1970 much of the land was used commercially to grow sugar cane. This garden is one of the 5 National Tropical Botanical Gardens started on this land in the early 70's. This garden contains plant species from the Old and New World Tropics, some of which are extinct in the wild. The emphasis is on wild-collected specimens, particularly those endemic to Hawai'i and other Pacific Islands. We took a tram from the visitor's center to the garden and then had it's 50 acres (of 273) open to the public all to ourselves. There was one other couple on the tram with us from California who had been here several times before. I will just present a few pictures John took. If you're dying to know the species etc, let me know and I'll be happy to look it up for you :-)

View going into the valley. There is an Allerton Garden that is also part of the NTBG. He owned all this land before selling it to the NTBG. He originally started the gardens. Allerton is a very formal garden however, and John couldn't take his tripod in there and it's a structured tour.

African Bread Fruit

These 2 Dutchman's Pipe's were growing in amongst a huge vine on a Monkey Pod Tree. The largest was about 10" high and 7" wide.

White Hibiscus

Red Clay Hibiscus

No clue on this one...looked like a thistle leaf, but definitely not a thistle flower.

Lots of cool bromiliads!

and a cute little chamelion to add some change.

After 2 hours of wandering, we caught the shuttle back to the visitors center and had a nice lunch in all the trees. On the way home we drove through this "Tree Tunnel" made of Eucalyptus Trees planted back when this was all Sugar Cane back in the 30's.

Very Cool.

Headed back toward Princeville with an important stop at Costco for a Rotissarie Chicken :-) and a multitude of samples! Then home to relax a little before thinking about a complicated dinner! We are on the 3rd floor of our time-share complex and are really up in the trees - our favorite one being a shefflera tree that encircles our corner lanai.


As we were enjoying our wine and cheese this afternoon, we had the following visitors to our tree.

Myna Bird

House Sparrow

Our personal favorite, a Japanese White-eye.

A house finch

and another favorite, the Red-crested Cardinal.

Quite a nice day! Note that all of this, plants and birds were accompanied by multiple roosters crowing all day, near and far. The Island is loaded with them and they begin at first light and end just about as it gets dark. Part of the charm......

Night all.