Editor's Corner

Good morning, folks. I hope I haven’t bored you to death with my Editor’s Corner topics that are only slightly related to English and mostly related to new things I learned on vacation. Only one more to go. This last one is about the Allerton and McBryde National Tropical Botanical Gardens, and more specifically about the state tree of Hawaii, the kukui nut tree, or candlenut tree.

Here’s a photo of the kukui nuts up in the tree:

They fall to the ground and look like this:

They are about two inches wide. There is a good reason that the kukui is the state tree of Hawaii. They grow well and provide delicious shade from the sun, but they also provided the original Hawaiians with much more. After gathering these nuts from the ground, you can use a rock to clear the fruit off the nut. It looks something like a baby coconut:

The white part inside the nut is the oily substance used to light torches. Your favorite tiki torch is probably a replica of the original. Each nut provides about 15 minutes of light. The nuts were also used for medicine, cooking, and they were polished to make leis. This is not my photo or my husband, but it is a polished kukui nut lei:

And one more photo from the garden, which is a scene used in many American movies (Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean, 6 Days, 7 Nights, etc.).

I hope you learned a few things during my vacation review. Mahalo for reading!

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com

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