Ma'o (Bernice Akamine)

Maʻo. It's interesting that it's prominent in the Garden because I don't think it was ever found naturally. It didn't find it's way naturally to the Big Island. So, it actually had to be introduced in modern times. Maʻo, green. That's one of the words for green in Hawaiian. Most people think that if you took the leaves, you would get a green dye. But if you take the leaves, what you get is a brown with an orange tint, an orangish brown dye from the leaves. And you get green from the flowers. So it's really the petals. Maʻo is a nice--the flowers are great for making dye because you can use it fresh. You can take the petals. It's just the petals. It's not the pistil, it's not the stamen, it's nothing else, just the petals that give you color. You really need a lot if you're going to do something big. That may be why it's always been said maʻo wasn't used a lot. The color's pretty fugitive, so you'd have to use some kind of mordant. The Hawaiians used predominantly salt, but they would also use alaea. You would put salt into your dye mixture for the maʻo. You would take the petals--they actually give their color up very easily. If you were to take the petals and put them in water, the color leaches out but you need a lot of petals to do this. Or you could smash them in a mortar and pestle and then add a little water and you could then use it more as an ink type. Another nice thing about maʻo is that you could actually pick up the dry flowers, so you can save them. If you just have one small plant, you could take the dry flowers, wait until you have enough for a dye bath, and then use them. Maʻo can be dried and then reconstituted, so that's nice.