Summary[
edit] Description: ʻAiea or Small-flowered ʻaiea Solanaceae Endemic to the Hawaiian Islands (Hawaiʻi Island) IUCN: Critically Endangered Oʻahu (Cultivated) Flowers are very fragrant with a lemony smell. The city of ʻAiea, Oʻahu, State of Hawaiʻi, USA (where I lived for several years) was named after the tree. Early Hawaiians used ʻaiea in various ways. Botanist Joseph Rock (1913) wrote, “The wood of this [species] is soft and of a green color; it was used by the natives in the olden days for finishing off canoes." The wood was also used in thatching sticks (ʻaho) in house construction, and in canoe building for gunwales (moʻo) and the sharp point of the stern (moamoa). Fruits were sometimes eaten. Medicinally, the leaves, bark, and tap root were pounded, mixed with water, strained, heated with hot rocks, and cooled to use in the treatment of pūhā kolekole a ‘a‘ai (abcesses). It was also made into a liquid medicine with ‘ōhi‘a bark (Metrosideros spp.), moa holo kula (Psilotum nudum), and kō honua‘ula (red/purple sugarcane) for pūhā kolekole. NPH00003
nativeplants.hawaii.edu/plant/view/Nothocestrum_breviflorum. Date: 23 May 2009, 15:32. Source:
Nothocestrum breviflorum. Author:
David Eickhoff from Hawaiʻi, USA.