satellite view from PMNM
E komo mai; welcome! Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge is surrounded by a lei of foam in the middle of the North Pacific; it's a beautiful, special place.

Not only are there albatross on Midway, but many other interesting kinds of wildlife, both on the land and in the sea. Please enjoy exploring FOAM, an educational blog actively done while on Midway from May through August 2010. Posts are added from off-Midway, as information becomes available. If you're interested in a particular topic, please use the search box or the alphabetical list of "labels" along the left side of the blog page.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Planting Cuttings of `Āweoweo

Yesterday we worked in the greenhouse and made cuttings of an endemic plant called Goosefoot, Chenopodium oahuense.  Doesn't the leaf in the small picture to the right look a little bit like a goose foot?!  It's called `Āweoweo in Hawaiian, which is also the name for the Big Eye reef fish, Priacanthus.  Matt said Hawaiians made this plant-fish connection because they noticed that Goosefoot leaves smell very fishy.  Since we were trimming some leaves off the cuttings anyway, I tried crushing some...and they DO smell like fresh, raw fish!    

After cutting a leafy piece of Goosefoot and trimming off some leaves, we dipped the cut end into a plant hormone powder called Rootone and stuck it into a pot of sand.  Rootone will speed up the growth of roots near the cut end.  After enough of those roots have grown, we'll plant the `Āweoweo back into its native environment.

Matt Saunter, Ilana Nimz and Ted McKinley (the photographer) joined me, Adam and Greg in this work.  We planted 3 or 4 plants in each of 65 pots; you can see how happy we are!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Barbara!
The blog is cute! Thanks for putting our picture up! The characters are fun and you've got some great topics! I'm looking forward to reading more!
Ilana

Anonymous said...

Very interesting blog!
Aisha-