Kahanu Garden
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kahanu Garden (472 acres) is a nonprofit botanical garden located on the Hana Highway (close to the 31 mile marker) near Hāna, Maui, Hawaii. It is part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG), and open Monday through Friday. An admission fee is charged.
The garden was established in 1972 on Maui's northern coast, with rugged black lava seascapes, and is surrounded by one of Hawaii's last undisturbed pandanus forests. It also contains the Pi`ilanihale Heiau, a National Historic Landmark believed to be the largest ancient temple in Polynesia. Constructed from lava blocks, it dates from the 16th century, and is 341 feet by 415 feet in extent with a 50-foot high front wall.
The garden's ethnobotanical collections focus on plants traditionally used by Pacific Island people. It includes the world's largest breadfruit collection, established in the 1970s, with the first trees planted in 1978. From 1985 to 1987, Dr. Diane Ragone visited 45 Pacific islands to collect breadfruit varieties and document traditional uses. Today the garden contains 195 accessions with more than 120 cultivars collected from field expeditions to over 17 Pacific island groups in Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia, as well as Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Seychelles. This collection is used for research and conservation by NTBG’s Breadfruit Institute.
Other garden holdings include bamboo, banana, calabash, coconut, kava, laurel, Pritchardia palm, sugarcane, taro, turmeric, vanilla, and bitter yam.
