Nalu Music

hat a mine of wealth these magnificent koa trees would be to the people who should transport their timber to the shore and ship it to foreign countries! The koa is the Hawaiian mahogany. It takes a polish like gold or diamonds. In the hands of foreign workmen, it might be made as ornamental as precious marble. And here is a great belt of it around Hawaii, broad and full enough to supply every city in America. These commercial estimates are all afterthoughts. While under the fascination of the lavish beauty of the woods, no sense is appealed to but the æsthetic.” —George Leonard Chaney, Aloha! A Hawaiian Salutation, 1879

“Satiny koa, the mahogany of the Pacific, the “royal tree,” fit to make you weep.” — Mabel Clare Craft, Hawaii Nei, 1898

wo companies are now organized to lumber Koa in Hawaii: the Hawaiian Mahogany Lumber Company, Limited, operating on the Bishop Estate land of Keauhou in Kau and the American Hawaiian Mahogany Lumber Company, operating in South Kona, both on the island of Hawaii. The similarity in name of the two companies is accidental. The former is an Hawaiian, the latter a California corporation.” — Third Report of the Board of Commissioners of Agriculture and Forestry of the Territory of Hawaii, For the Year ending December 31, 1906

Acacia Koa, A. Gray.
“Hawaii; there one of the most valuable of timber trees. Stem reaching a height of 60 feet, topped by wide-spreading phyllodinous foliage. Wood easy to work, particularly in a fresh state; formerly much used for boat-building and for building purposes generally; also suitable for cabinet-work. Species of Metrosideros, some ascending to 8,000 feet, one overtopping all other trees, furnish a large share of hard, tough and very durable timber in the Hawaiian islands. Their wood varies from a light red to a purplish hue.” — Baron Ferd. von Mueller, Select Extra-tropical Plants Readily Eligible for Industrial Culture or Naturalization, 1884

n the mid-afternoon we took the train for Glenwood, thirty miles on our way to the volcano of Kilauea. A large part of the way the road leads through sugar plantations, newly carved out of the koa and tree-fern wilderness that originally covered the volcanic soil.” — John Burroughs, Time and Change, 1912

“The Kauila and the Kamani are very handsome, but the Koa is most frequently met with, and when polished is excelled in appearance by none.” — J. W. Boddam-Wetham, Pearls of the Pacific, 1876

e were now among the clouds, and at times completely enveloped by them, and once a smart shower compelled us to seek refuge under the remarkably curved trunk of a koa-tree that for years had lain prostrate, and the vines and underwood that had grown up around its sides seemed to protect, while it afforded shelter for us all.” — Edward T. Perkins, Na Motu: or, Reef-rovings in the South Seas, 1854

“There lay the coffins of all the kings of Hawaii, their consorts, and their children, for many generations past. The greater part were of polished koa wood, though some were covered with red velvet ornamented with gold.” — Mrs. [Annie] Brassey, Around the World in the Yacht ‘Sunbeam’, 1878

upulupulu was the god of the koa forest. Any wanderer in the woods was in the domain of the god. It was supposed that every rustling footstep was heard by most acute ears, and every motion of the hand was watched by the sharpest eyes. Dread of the unseen and unheard made every forest rover tremble until he had made some proper offering and uttered some effective incantation.” — W. D. Westervelt, Legends of Old Honolulu, 1915

n 1840 the exports from Hilo amounted to two hundred thousand shingles, a considerable quantity of Koa lumber, forty or fifty tons of sugar, and one hundred and fifty tons of arrow root. Seven miles inland there is a saw-mill, which, when water is abundant, can saw from six to eight hundred feet of boards per day.” — James J. Jarves, Scenes and Scenery in the Sandwich Islands, 1843

“Upon the Governor’s invitation, we examined the various rooms of his house. The doors and the other wood work are made of koa wood, which unites the elegance of the curled maple and the black walnut.” — Francis Allyn Olmsted, Incidents of a Whaling Voyage, 1841

or a time the road winds through green, rolling plains studded with gray shapes of large, dead trees, and then comes to the sawmills of the Hawaii Mahogany Company. Here we went on foot among noble living specimens of the giant koa, which range from sixty to eighty feet, their diameters a tenth of their height, with wide-spreading limbs—beautiful trees of laurel-green foliage with moon-shaped, leaf-like bracts. It was in royal canoes of this acacia, often seventy feet in length, hollowed out of these mighty boles, that Kamehameha made his conquest of the group, and by means of which his empire-dreaming mind planned to subdue the Society Islands. As a by-product, the koa furnishes bark excellent for tanning purposes.

“Great logs, hugely pathetic in the relentless grasp of man-made machinery, were being dragged out by steel cable and donkey-engine, and piled in enormous and increasing heaps. Jack, who is inordinately fond of fine woods if they are cut unshammingly thick and honestly, left a good order with Mr. Kant, the manager on the ground, for certain generous table-top slabs to be seasoned from logs which we chose for their magnificent grain and texture.

“In addition to their flourishing koa business, these mills are turning out five hundred ohia lehua railroad ties per day, and filling orders from the States. But one can easily predict a barren future for the forests of Hawaii if no restraint, as now, is enforced in the selection of trees.” — Charmian London, Our Hawaii, 1920

he rides up the mountain which rose up almost immediately behind the house were lovely, such a wide vista to look out on, bounded only by the sea; groves of bamboo, and coffee bushes were in abundance, and solitary trees of koa shewed where this beautiful wood had once flourished in abundance.” — M. Forsyth Grant, Scenes in Hawaii, 1888

“The koa is a wonderful golden brown in color, full of light and shadows, and exquisitely grained.” — William R. Castle, Jr., Hawaii, Past and Present, 1917

oa is found on all the islands of the group, and adapts itself to almost any condition. It descends to as low as 600 feet, and ascends to an elevation of 5000 feet, and sometimes higher. Beautiful trees can be observed on the slopes of Mauna Loa on the Island of Hawaii, not far from the volcano, as well as in South Kona on the same mountain. It is sad, however, to see these gigantic trees succumb to the ravages of cattle and insects.” — Joseph F. Rock, Indigenous Trees of the Hawaiian Islands, 1913

“The finest of the finches of Hawaii is the orange koa finch, which has its principal habitat in the koa forests, living on the beans of that tree and also on it lepidopterous larvae. Another is a curious-looking bird called the parrot-billed koa finch, having a hooked and parrot-like bill well fitted for its work of tearing open the terminal dean twigs of the koa-tree, in which it finds its diet of the larvae of the longicorn beetles. The bird’s stout legs and claws enable it to get a firm hold of the branches; less powerful mandibles would not be able to get at the hidden pest of the tree. Its young are fed on small caterpillars of the koa and the ohia. Mr. Henshaw found this bird tame and even a bit inquisitive as to visitors, and he says that it was more easily watched than any other Hawaiian bird he knew. The koa and this particular finch are interdependent, and it is to be hoped that neither the ravages of wandering cattle will destroy the trees nor the greed of man exterminate the fine bird.” — J. A. Owen, “The Birds of Hawaii,”Blackwood’s Magazine, 1904

N.B. The orange koa-finch (Psittirostra palmeri, shown above) is presumed extinct, last seen in the 1890s; the parrot-billed koa finch (Pseudonestor xanthophrys) is endangered.

oa is the one fairly abundant tree of the Hawaiian forests which is valuable because of its lumber. It is a highly prized cabinet wood, which has been largely used on the islands and has also been exported in limited quantities. Its color varies through many rich shades of red and brown; it grain is fine and indistinct. Curly koa is especially prized, but is very rare. Most of the best koa on Maui has been cut, but an extensive mature forest exists in Hilo and Puna at elevations of from 4,000 to 6,000 feet. This forest is but little known, but seems to contain some magnificent timber and to be in a good state of reproduction. Practically all of this forest is upon accessible government land, and could be utilized to great advantage should the government build a road to it and establish a sawmill for working up the mature trees.” — William L. Hall, The Forests of the Hawaiian Islands, 1904

“Back of the Volcano House are lovely woods, with every now and then an open glade ringed by a rank growth of ferns and of vines bearing the delicious little scarlet thimble-berries which grow wild all through the region. A few miles through these woods lead one to a splendid koa forest and to the mill of the Hawaiian Lumber Company, where the koa is sawed into boards and shipped away. The trees in this forest are very old, as can be seen by their huge knotted trunks and their twisted limbs. They would look like ancient oaks except that on the full-grown trees the leaves are crescent-shaped and polished, and on the younger shoots lace-like, as are the leaves of the mimosa. Near here are the tree-moulds formed by some ancient lava flow. The molten lava, making its way through the forest, surrounded the great trunks of the trees, burning them finally, of course, but hardening so quickly that it recorded faithfully every line of the bark before the tree was turned into ashes. Over the flow new growth has started, but here and there are holes in the ground as round, as even , as delicately chiseled as though they were casts for future columns.” — William R. Castle, Jr., Hawaii, Past and Present, 1917

he monarch of native Hawaiian forest trees is the koa. Its height of 50 feet or more and its crown of far spreading branches are attained slowly. It is common on mountain sides, chiefly between altitudes of 1,500 and 4,000 feet, where its round dark green crown is a characteristic feature of the landscape. It is one of the 12 best trees for reforestation. Where growing together under perfect conditions, which seem to be near the higher limit, the trunks are tall and straight for as great a height as 60 feet before any branches begin, and a few reach a diameter of 10 feet. At high altitudes this is especially true today and was also true in the past, as is evidenced by fossils. Lava flowing down the slopes of Mauna Loa buried whole forests, and now near Kilauea Crater, deep well-like holes can be found which are casts of giant koas, the wood of which burned or rotted away long ago. Flows destroyed the trees in ancient times; in modern times, cutting and burning are reducing their numbers even more rapidly. Where growing alone or mixed with lower plants, the koa has wide-spreading branches beginning low down on the trunk.

“The bark is light gray, smooth on young trees, on mature trees considerably furrowed longitudinally. Its smooth, stiff, crescent-shaped “leaves” are broad leaf stems functioning as leaves. Real leaves can be found on young trees and near the base of older ones, and they are finely divided, consisting of five to seven pairs of pinnae, each pinna with 12 to 24 pairs of leaflets. In late winter and early spring, the crown of leaves is lightened by small balls of pale yellow clustered flowers, many of which develop into thin pods.

“Koa wood, used extensively in Hawaii, is called “Hawaiian Mahogany.” When polished it takes a beautiful red through which wavy lines show. Whereas now it is used for furniture, woodwork, ukuleles, and novelties, it formerly was carved by Hawaiians into such things as war canoes, surf boards, and calabashes, and was then as now perhaps the most valuable lumber tree in Hawaii.” — Marie C. Neal, In Gardens of Hawaii, 1965