Seeking
Silverswords
I have certainly had my view of
the world shaped by the pages of the National Geographic
Magazine. I first got my certificate of membership in the
National Geographic Society as an 8 year-old. I can
remember those first issues well. 1959 was a big year: the
USS Skate surfaces at the North Pole and two new states,
Alaska and Hawai'i enter the Union. Perhaps it was then
when I saw a photo of this mysterious relative of the
sunflower. It grows nowhere but the high volcanoes of the
Hawaiian Islands.
For
most of its life it resembles an minature agave,
narrow-pointed leaves that spiral outward from a central
core. The leaves are almost aluminized in color, apparently
as an adaption to the intense solar radiation found at 9000
feet in the tropics. Its leaves form an almost globe shape,
except for its flatten "butch haircut" appearance on top.
Few plants are neighbors in this landscape of pumice,
cinder cones and lava flows. They grow for several years
before sending up a massive spike that contains hundreds of
small flowers each resembling a small sunflower. Once they
have bloomed they die. They bloom in the summer months of
June, July and August.
On
a recent trip to Hawai'i, I wanted to see the silversword
myself. I was able to take a twelve-mile hike down into the
eroded valley high on Haleakala. It was a rough and
inhospitable place for people, but a home to the
silversword. To my delight, many were in full bloom, and in
the dry wind I could smell their scent hundreds of feet
away.
Here
are a few photos of the silverswords in Haleakala National
Park.
