A cool breeze had me seeking the warmth of the jeep for the first time since I’d arrived on the Big Island. Standing in breezy mountain air at 7,000 feet among cinder cone hills covered in short grass prairie. Was I back in Arizona, or on the slopes of Mauna Kea?

A cluster of trees broke the monotonous grassland, drawing me in. Nearing the copse, I saw that the entire grove had a common origin. Was this all one tree?

The mother trunk was mostly rotted, but the main limb had fallen into verdant earth and re-sprouted as another trunk, producing twisted stout anaconda-like limbs. The tree created it’s own shelter, its own ecosystem; a single tree and a grove all at once.

It was a Koa acacia—King of the island’s native trees. Growing from ocean-edge to the aridity tree-line around 8,000 feet, Koas can be reminiscent of California’s foothill live oaks, large limbed and spreading. In the deeper forest, they are straighter, with massive shreddy grey trunks reminiscent of a Coast redwood.

Most of Hawaii’s trees, however, are imports, non-natives, newcomers; like the Monkeypod tree. Samanea saman grew from southern Mexico to Peru prior to maritime transport. Today, their unmistakably massive, rounded canopies dot the island. The individual in the photo below is located in Hilo, at the Wailoa River park.

Hilo is also home to several spectacular Banyan trees, another once-foreign species. There are a couple of big Banyans in front of the high school on Waianuenue Avenue, and another giant above the parking lot at Rainbow Falls, on the northwest side of town.

Banyans could be considered the biggest trees in the world, although their “trunks” are a multitude of sprouts that extend vertically to the ground, often from another host tree. I have no idea how I would measure a banyan using standard procedures. The Great Banyan of Kolkata, India boasts 2,800 supplemental trunks that cover over 5 acres. That translates to a crown spread of over 1,000 feet!

A young Banyan in Kalopa Forest

A more classically shaped big-island tree is the Cook’s pine; not really a pine, but an Araucaria. In Chile, Araucaria’s dome-shaped crowns silhouette starkly against snowy volcanoes. Cooks pine is a different species: Araucaria columnaris, native to New Caledonia where most Araucarias grow. On the island, there is a giant columnaris in Waimea, at the Parker School, and another very tall specimen (likely over 200′) at Shipman Beach, a lovely cove at the end of a 2.5 mile trail on the east coast.

The next time I visit the Big Island, I’m bringing my tree measuring kit.