Beings as verbs.
The messy reconfigurations of life that are remaking the world.
“Grasses are invasive here,” my Kānaka Maoli agroforestry collaborator told me earlier this year. The statement seemed odd to me then, as I thought about the numerous homes with “nice” lawns, the many picturesque ranches across the islands dominated by different grasses, and the resorts and estates considered by many to be “luxurious” in part due to their expansive fields of neatly manicured grass.
The term “invasive” is political and contentious—depending on one’s goals, intentions, and point of view.
But I began to understand what my collaborator meant by his statement when he took us up Kohala Mountain to see how the many native trees, ferns, and other plants we’d been working with behaved and thrived together in mature communities.
With permitted access into Parker Ranch—one of the largest cattle ranches in all of the “United States” and the fourth or fifth largest landowner in Hawaiʻi, holding over 100,000 acres—we drove through its seemingly endless rolling hills of pasture, eventually meeting its fenceline that bordered a protected forest reserve. The contrast on either side of that fence was stark. On the side that we came from stood an un-arbored landscape blanketed by vast fields of grass, sparsely speckled with the remnants of long-decayed trees. The side that we climbed into was a densely canopied wet forest. Even from afar, one can see this distinct boundary—a broad, solid band of light green makes up the base of the mountain with a sudden transition into dark green beyond the linear and angled perimeters of the cattle fencing.
As we bushwhacked our way in deeper, I felt like we were entering an entirely different world.
In contrast to the heat from the open pastures behind us exposed to direct sun, it was cool under the tall canopy of the dominant ʻŌhiʻa lehua trees—which make up 80% of Hawaiʻi’s native forests. They are known to be vital to watersheds across the islands: “ʻŌhiʻa grows naturally with all kinds of mosses, ferns, and keiki (young) plants all over its branches. They are like a big fishnet, capturing tiny mist droplets that slowly seep down into our aquifers,” writes Heidi Bornhorst.
Blair Langston of Pilina ʻĀina shares that “Ohi” in Hawaiian means “to collect”—with ʻŌhiʻa in part named so to refer to their role as water collectors. These trees have certain morphological characteristics that make them up to 50% more effective at drawing in water when compared to other non-Hawaiian tree species. Langston also emphasizes the saying, “Hahai no ka ua i ka ulu lāʻau,” which translates to “The rain follows after the forest.”
