How can a tiny seedling bring me so much joy? Last week, I was clearing around the base of several large olapa trees when I came across this little guy. Almost a decade ago, I did a post on identifying native seedlings. While it was me showing the differences with different species, they were also fruits that we collected that I was propagating for outplanting at our restoration site.

This photo of an olapa seedling (Cheirodendron trigynum) was part of small batch that I was able to get going from a mature tree that we collected back in 2013. Olapa has been particularly difficult for us to grow as I had only gotten it to germinate in 2013 and 2022.

For all the difficulty we’ve had with germination, once it’s in the ground it has been the second fastest growing tree after koa. This seedling is now a 25 foot tall tree that has been blooming and fruiting for the past few years.

And viable fruit too. Coming across naturally regenerating olapa seedlings under the mature olapa trees we planted almost a decade ago is incredibly fulfilling. It’s particularly neat that through this blog I was able to document that. Knowing that the actions I took 10 years ago, have literally been this fruitful gives me confidence on the future of that native forests on Pu`u `Ohi`a. Let’s see what native plants I’ll be posting in 2034!