Pulu

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For the Tibetan ball game, see Polo. For the King of Babylon, see Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria.

Pulu is a silky material obtained from the fibers of the hapuʻu pulu (Cibotium glaucum), a tree fern of Hawaii. It is made of the brown hairs that cover the young fiddlehead as it uncoils. For a period in the 1800's, pulu was collected, dried, and exported as pillow and mattress stuffing. A stone structure in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park known as the Old Pulu Factory was a site for drying and packing pulu. However, the discovery that pulu breaks down and crumbles into dust after only a few years led to the demise of the industry. In addition, pulu was often collected by cutting down the slow-growing hapuʻu, an extremely unsustainable method. Natives have used pulu as a wound dressing and for embalming.