The Museum of Hawaiian Plant Lore

My miniature setting for the 2012 Philadelphia Flower Show is going to be a miniature museum that highlights Hawaiian plant lore and mythology. I have been researching the stories, myths, chants, and belief systems of the ancient and contemporary indigenous Hawaiian (I am an anthropologist, by the way) so what I will present in the miniature exhibits will be based in real information about Hawaiian culture. You can read about Hawaiian mythology here, and you can search for information about native Hawaiian plants here. Here are some of the topics I hope to cover, although I am not sure how many I can fit into the space we have (36″ by 22″).

PRELIMINARY TOPICS

The Hawaiian worldview, the way they see the world and how it works, relies on an integration of the world of the gods, the world of humans, and the environments in which they interact. An intimate knowledge of the physical world is tied through language, stories, and rituals to a sense of place, plants, animals, and physical forces as living beings all related to each other. The world is not divided up , as it is in Western cultures, into separate realms of science, religion, environment, or politics. Instead these are all aspects of every living thing, from a stone to a plant to a specific god. According to Beckwith’s classic study of Hawaiian myths, “Vegetable growth is regarded by Hawaiians with more religious awe than animal life because it is not so intimately associated with man. All life other than human springs from the gods since it is out of control of man. It is therefore alive with spirit force. Plants are thought of as transformation bodies of gods and as such take their place in myth.”

TOPIC 1:  THE KU GODS     KU, like most traditional Hawaiian gods, has many aspects. For example, he is associated with rain and forest plants and some of his names in this roles are:

Ku-moku-hali‘i (Ku spreading over the land)
Ku-pulupulu (Ku of the undergrowth)
Ku-olono-wao (Ku of the deep forest)
Ku-holoholo-pali (Ku sliding down steeps)
Ku-pepeiao-loa and -poko (Big- and small-eared Ku)
Kupa-ai-ke‘e (Adzing out the canoe)
Ku-mauna (Ku of the mountain)
Ku-ka-ohia-laka (Ku of the ohia-lehua tree)
Ku-ka-ieie (Ku of the wild pandanus vine) (taken from Beckwith, Hawaiian Mythology)

His role as the god of war and battles is familiar from “tiki” figures of a fearful, angry being with a wild face and human body. There are real images of a type of KU figure (you can see one here from the British Museum) that is the basis for some of these tourist productions..

Kuka’ilimoku is the war god, associated with King Kamehameha, and dubbed the “snatcher of lands.” But Kuka’o’o is the god of the digging stick, the ‘o’o. Ku also gave the breadfruit tree, the ‘ulu, (ARTOCARPUS ALTILIS) by burying himself in the earth during a famine and, watered by his wife’s tears, grew into the ‘ulu. I will develop an exhibit on Ku and his male generating force associated with plants and trees, including breadfruit, which became a staple food in the Hawaiian islands.

Breadfruit:

TOPIC 2:  PELE AND KAMAPUA’A   Kamapua’a is the shape shifting pig-man demigod who is also able to take the form of various plants. In one battle with his lover Pele, the goddess of volcanoes and fire, Kamapua’a took the form of the ‘ama’u fern (SADLERIA sp.) which today lives on the slopes of the caldera of Kilauea as a reminder of their encounters. The exhibit will use a cascading fountain to simulate lava flowing, surrounded by plants and ferns and a statue of Kamapua’a in his pig form.

Kamapua’a

TOPIC 3:  KAPA   The bark cloth, kapa, made from the wauke, the paper mulberry tree (BROUSSONETIA PAPYRIFERA). Kapa  was used for clothing, as blankets, as room dividers, to wrap offerings, to wrap the bones of the deceased, and to dress ceremonial objects, among other things. Kapa (called tapa elsewhere in the Pacific), was painted, dyed, stamped, and stenciled using dyes from other plants. It was made by beating the prepared bark and then attaching the thin pieces to each other with glue made from the ‘ama’u fern (same as the one in the above story of Kamapua’a). In mythology, the first wauke grew from the body of Maikoha, a man with several children who directed them to bury his body by a particular stream. When they did, the tree grew from his body and the children processed it into the first kapa. Maikoha became the ancestor god of kapa makers.

TOPIC 4: GOURDS

Gourds had many uses. They we used to carry and store water and could be made into drums for hula. The single gourd drum is an ipu and a double gourd drum is an ipu heke.   Rattles and game equipment were also made from gourds. A malevolent spirit could be identified by the type of reflection made in a gourd carrying water, revealing its presence to others. Seers could look into a water-filled gourd and make predictions. Gourds were often carried in a string net. Special gourds served as the “ipu o Lono,” or Lono’s gourd, and were used in different ceremonies, including the weaning of boys.

Double gourd drum, photo by L. Krasniewicz

Decorated Gourd, Bishop Museum

TOPIC 5: KOA  The koa tree (ACACIA KOA) produced wood that was used for canoes, paddles, spears, surfboards, and ritual objects. Koa is strong and beautiful, with swirls of different colors in the wood. A Koa tree chosen for a canoe was subject to approval by a local priest who used dream divination to decide if the tree was approapriate. Offerings were made to the gods of the forest.

Koa sufboards, Bishop Museum

Cheap plant material

I enjoyed the trip to Meadowbrook Farms that our group of miniaturists took for a meeting to prepare for the Flower Show. Not only was the meeting informative, but the shopping for plants there was fabulous. But that is a long trip for me, so I usually try to pick up things closer to home, often at local garden centers, including Waterloo Gardens in Devon. But this week I was at both Home Depot and Lowe’s and hit upon some great plant material.

First at Lowe’s, I found an amazing Peperomia prostrata, a vining peperomia with tiny succulent leaves. It is perfect for a wall I am making with vines hanging down it. I would tell you to rush over and get one but there was only one in the store I went to.

I have taken numerous cuttings from it (it was all tangled up and had to be cut apart anyway) and have potted then in the hopes of getting long, trailing growth.

Right now, both Lowe’s and Home Depot have these tiny Norfolk Pine for Christmas. Although they look large in the pot, they are actually several plants which can be taken apart. They don’t look tropical but since there are pines in Hawaii, maybe someone needs this type of plant.

Then I found these “ponytail” plants but instead of being large, they had tiny bulbous bodies, less than an inch wide. If I can keep them small, they could work.

I picked up a few Aralia and some ferns as well but they are too out of scale to use.

Miniature Gardening Resources

Some miniature gardening resources:

http://www.twogreenthumbs.com/about_miniature_gardening.html

Janit Calvo also has an excellent blog at:

The Mini Garden Guru

http://www.miniforest.com/

http://www.greenart.com/plants-miniatures1.html

  http://www.meehansminiatures.com/

http://www.miniaturegardenshoppe.com/

http://miniature-gardening.com/

http://www.robsviolet.com/miniature_houseplants.htm

What’s that thing called?

Last year I had about 6 weeks to design my miniature setting, buy and keep alive the plants, create the miniatures , and, most importantly, submit an accurate and correctly named list of all the plants I used. Since this was my first time, I had no idea how to do this but I have studied botany, became a Master Gardener in New Mexico, and always labeled my plants with their proper Latin names. So I was prepared but this can be one of the most daunting parts of any entry in the Flower Show. Fortunately, I know how to design and use databases so I designed a very simple one to keep track of the plants I might use and to generate the plant list that has to be submitted.

This is what an individual record looks like. My database currently has 100 plants in it and I am starting to update it. The images are from the websites listed and not from my own garden, although I would like to add my own images.

Mini plants have arrived

Nothing cheers up a gloomy rainy day like a shipment of new plants. I ordered some new mini plants from MiniForest and they arrived in great shape. MiniForest is always kind and friendly in addition to having great plants. They sent me an email about lowering my shipping cost and the box arrived exactly when they said it would.

First I ordered more dwarf golden Japanese sweet flag (I’ll be listing all the correct Latin names in a later post). This is the plant I have killed many times, I think  because I try to divide it too much. This time I will be more careful. It is just the right size for the look of a tropical grass.

Next, I bought two kinds of “Brass Button” mini-ferns, green and black. I am not sure there is enough contrast between them to have them grow side-by-side but maybe as they get bushier the contrast of the green against the black might work. One of the plants had some seed heads on it and I wonder if I can get them to grow.

I love heathers but have had no luck trying to get cuttings to root, even though every propagation book I have says it is the easiest thing on earth. Not on my earth! So I bought a small heather but it doesn’t look very tropical to me. Still, it has beautiful color and texture so it may be useful.

Finally, I ordered something I had never seen before: a bright green, flat surface plant with the ominous name of “Astro Turf.”  I think its quite ugly but I will try to pull off some individual rosettes and see if I can get them to grow.

Hawaiian capes and cloaks

I have started designing artifacts for the miniature Hawaiian museum. The first things are feather capes which are smaller than the cloak that I showed previously. I drew the capes in Adobe Illustrator using photographs of one real cape and a real cloak which I made smaller. The cloak is from the British Museum collection.

The British Museum cloak (see their entry in their online collection for details of the cloak’s history):

The cape is from the Bishop Museum collection and its information can be found here.

Illustrator work on the cape:

I printed the images on silk (it took 3 tries to get the saturation of the ink correct). I matched the colors to the images and to the mini feathers that I purchased. These are the final prints. The silk has a paper backing to get it through the printer. I will remove the backing before I glue the feathers on.

Growing mini plants indoors

Last year I tried to grow my miniature plants in a small, old greenhouse attached to our house. The greenhouse was wet and cold and since I was starting in January, I did not have a lot of time to test it out. So this year I decided to grow the plants indoors, in a room that has large windows and radiator heat at the base of each window. I purchased inexpensive gro-lights on Amazon

and small, 2 inch self-watering transplant pots from Gardener’s Supply Company.

Inexpensive shelving was found at IKEA:

I installed the shelves upside down so they are actually a tray that excess water can safely sit in. I still haven’t moved all my plants into this space but I got most of them in before it snowed last month.

Plants from seeds

Miniature plants have to look to scale when they are planted in a miniature setting. There are many plants to purchase that would work for a tropical look but I have killed more plants than I have kept alive and since the miniature ones are so expensive, I decided to try some from seed. These three plants are actually from seeds taken from full-scale plants in my outdoor garden. Since they are being grown in pots, and indoors, so far they have not gotten very big but each had the potential to be a normal size plant. It will be interesting to see what happens in a few months. The mimosa is a tree about 15 feet tall when mature; the blood sorrel has leaves about 12 inches long when full grown in late summer; the bamboo is a short variety, about 2 feet tall.

Chocolate Mimosa

Bamboo

Blood Sorrel

Lucky finds at the miniature show

One of the artifacts that I hoped to make for my Hawaiian Culture museum was a miniature replica of a feathered cloak that for years was displayed in the Penn Museum. Here is what the cape (called ‘ahu ‘ula) looked like when it was displayed (see the museum website).

Sadly, the entire Polynesia display has been permanently removed but I was able to see the cloak in a drawer in storage, thanks to Adria Katz, the keeper in charge of the collection.

But I was never able to find small scale feathers that I would nee to make the cloak look accurate so I was planning to simply print the design on silk. But then I found miniature feathers and now my life will be filled with the eye-straining adventure of gluing little feathers to make the cape. I am making this public so I don’t chicken out.

Mini feathers found at JoAnne Roberts’ booth will do the trick:

Other finds include some rough mini pots that I may paint or design, found at “Small Time Creations”:

A couple of surfboards that I will try to make look like original Hawaiian boards were found at a shop called “Small Talk.”  And some tropical wallpaper at “Designing Ways”:

I do not have links to these last four shops.

The Quest for Artifacts: Philadelphia Miniaturia

This weekend is one of the largest miniature shows on the east coast, Philadelphia Miniaturia, which is held not in Philly but in Cherry Hill, N.J. The show featured many high quality artists.

I was searching for object that could work in the Hawaiian Culture museum I am building. Not surprisingly, I did not find any Hawaiian themed objects but I did find out that other participants in the Flower Show were also there looking. What I did find were many friendly and helpful people and I was able to buy several turned wood bowls from two different artists. Their wood pieces resembled those I have seen in the Penn Museum collection (see the next blog entry) and in the digital database of the Bishop Museum in Hawaii.

First the wood pieces. I bought two bowls from “RJT Miniatures.” Rob and Kate Tuckham came all the way from British Columbia with their wonderful wood designs for the show and actually had a bowl made of koa, a Hawaiian wood.

I also bought a rimmed bowl from Bear and Lisa Limvere of “Standing People Designs.”

Their works are also beautiful and they were very helpful, showing me a lot of different minis as we tried to find something that was close to the shape of real Hawaiian artifacts. I chose this rimmed bowl.

INTRO: Miniatures at the Philadelphia Flower Show

Each year, the Philadelphia Convention Center is transformed into a garden paradise when the International Philadelphia Flower Show (which everyone here calls simply the Flower Show) opens. During the show, which runs for a week in March, you will find dozens of people in line each day waiting for a chance to see the display of scale miniature gardens. I will be documenting my entry in this year’s miniature setting display.

The theme this year is “Hawaii”  which should be easy to do, or so you might think. There are indoor settings and outdoor setting, 6 of each. I “volunteered” to do an indoor setting because everyone else, dreaming of palm trees and orchids I guess, wanted the outdoor category. I did an outdoor setting last year (see Jules Verne’s garden here or see a few of the images below) but an indoor room is particularly challenging for Hawaii. All the spectacular concepts I could conjure (crashing waves on pristine seashores, lava-spewing volcanos with shocking green plants contrasted with the black ground) are outdoor ones. And who wants to be indoors in Hawaii???

So I thought of something we did indoors when we visited Hawaii and the idea of creating a miniature version of some of the rooms in the Bishop Museum in Honolulu came to me. I was most interested in the exhibits on ancient Hawaiian culture (I am an anthropologist, by the way, and have worked in a museum) and while the Bishop Museum has recently renovated its exhibits, I thought I could focus on topics I was interested in rather than on replicating the actual museum. So, I will be creating a few rooms of a (fictitious) museum of Hawaiian Culture, with a focus on plant lore and mythology.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.