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Natural History

Papaya, Mikana
(Carica papaya)


How and when papaya became established in Hawaii is a mystery. Historical journals note it as growing in Don Francisco de Paula Marin's gardens in 1831. Once used in the islands for chicken and pig food, the papaya is now a favorite on most menus. The Pukui-Elbert dictionary calls it "mikana."

Papaya is a New World fruit native to South and Central America. The name "papaya" is a Spanish adaptation of ababai, from the pre-Columbian people in the Carribean. In Australia, they call the papaya a "pawpaw", which is what Americans call "custard apple."

Apparently an early European introduction to Polynesia, it quickly spread to nearly every high island in the region. The tree is very easily cultivated in the tropical South Seas climate.

Papaya looks like a melon but grows on a large, hollow, unbranched herbaceous shrub that looks like a tree. Its large, handsome leaves grow on long stems coming out of the main stalk at right angles. The lines of the tree are strongly horizontal and it is the subject of many pictures.
Papaya grows wild in many gulches on all islands where seeds have been spread by birds, animals and humans, especially below the 2,000 foot elevation. The plant grows rapidly from seed in well-drained sandy soil..
The papaya tree can grow to 30 feet, but the University of Hawaii developed 5 to 6 foot varieties that make picking easier. Trees bear in their first year, but the best crops happen in the second to fourth years. (In commercial operations fields are usually abandoned or replanted after three years.) A good tree can bear from 75 to as much as 300 pounds of fruit every year, and some trees in home gardens have continued to produce fruit for as long as 15 years.

The one-inch, tubular five-petaled flowers are creamy white. Originally, papaya plants came in three sexes: male, female and hermaphrodite, which have male and female flowers on the same tree. Female and hermaphrodite plants have short-stalked flowers that grow in the leaf axils while male plants have long stalks and grow on branchlets among the leaves. The flowers are pollinated by bees. The male flowers are more fragrant than the either the female or the hermaphrodite flowers and can be used for leis. Because the male plants don't fruit, they are usually not allowed to continue to grow and have become a rarity in most home gardens.

Peggy Hickok Hodge says the only way you can sex a particular tree is to wait until it blooms and watch the flowers. She recommends that the only trees to be given space in a home garden should be hermaphroditic plants which are most likely to produce fruit. She says, "Some (flowers) will be double but have only pistils on them. These pistils give the flowers a double appearance, but when a flower has both pistils and stamens it will appear doubly double." Right. As Hodge points out, since most people no longer grow the male plants, those that produce only female flowers are unlikely to get fertilized.

At best only 66 percent of the seedlings from most plants produce fruit. There are various stories connected with this tendency. Some growers say that sometimes, if you cut the top off a tree that produces only male flowers, it will "switch" and start growing female flowers. One friend says he once got a tree to start fruiting by leaning an ax against the tree trunk and explaining that it really had to start doing something, or else.... Surprisingly, the implied threat worked. The tree started putting out sweet fruits copiously.

It could be most disappointing to grow a papaya tree that never fruits. In 1919, the Hawaii Agricultural Experiment Station horticulturists developed the delicious string-less "Solo" papaya. Some people say every seedling of that hermaphroditic variety grows into a plant that bears fruit.

Because papaya dates from prehistoric times, it has proliferated into dozens of horticultural varieties. Some fruits are tiny and others are as large as watermelons. Most market-sized papaya weigh 1-1/4 pounds are 6 to 12 inches long and have 5 shallow grooves from top to bottom. The fruits cluster along the plant stem under a crown of leaves.

The flesh of the fruit is yellow-green to deep orange, with a green, smooth skin that turns yellow when ripe. The sweet ripe fruit is delicious eaten raw and is a good source of Vitamins A, C, and G, sugar and calcium. These fruits are also dried, juiced or made into jams, marmalades and various baked goods. The green fruits can be baked, steamed and used in soup like squash and taste like a fruity zucchini.

A cavity in the center of the fruit is usually filled with numerous small, shiny black seeds that have a peppery taste. The seeds are used in island salad dressings and other recipes. Some fruit develop without seeds.

The milky juice found in the green fruits contain papain, a beneficial enzyme which is believed to aid digestion. It is also used as a meat tenderizer as well as in cosmetics as an exfoliant to remove dead, dry skin cells and in a chemical used to dissolve ruptured vertebral discs in lieu of back surgery. Papaya also contains an alkaloid called carpain that is similar in action to digitalin for reducing heart rate, blood pressure and respiration.

In Hawaii, the sap was used to treat sores, wounds and bee stings. Various parts of the plant were sometimes used to treat stomach problem.
 

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Arts & Culture

Home Of The Medical Missionary

Baldwin House was the home of Reverend Dwight Baldwin and his wife Charlotte for 34 years. They spent the years there raising six children and welcoming visitors that included Hawaiian royals and commoners, visiting dignitaries, sea captains and ordinary seamen.

The House is now a museum with memorabilia and furnishings contributed by Baldwin descendents. Donated to Maui by the family heirs, it pays homage to all missionaries in Hawaii. It also provides a glimpse at the life during Hawaii's missionary era.

Centrally located on a shady corner of Front and Dickenson Streets near the banyan tree, the house and the Master's Reading Room next door was built in 1834 facing the harbor. and is the oldest standing buildings in Lahaina. The house was built with thick walls of coral stone and hand-hewn timbers and a second story was added in 1849 to accommodate the couple's six children. (The reading room was supposed to give sea captains some "healthy" amusement. It probably did amuse them.)

The building was restored to exacting detail by the Lahaina Restoration Foundation (in cooperation with American Factors, Inc., and the County of Maui). On display are paintings, family treasures like an antiquated medical kit and porcelain from the Orient that survived the voyage around Cape Horn and period furniture that includes a four-poster bed fashioned out of native koa wood and a Steinway piano (with hymnbook), furniture built by the Reverent, the black serge gowns worn by his wife and daughter, as well as every-day articles.

Reverend Dwight Baldwin and his wife of a few weeks sailed from New England in 1830 to Waimea. From there, he was assigned, in 1835, as pastor of Lahaina's old Wainee Church. He and his wife found their life's work in Lahaina.

A busy missionary and Harvard-trained physician, Baldwin was also intimately involved in community affairs. He was a primary force in controlling the "sinful" antics of whalers and in educating the "natives" in practical and religious matters. His home served as a medical office and center of missionary activity.

Between 1829 and 1849, whaling in the waters around Hawaii, from the Sea of Japan to the Arctic, kept increasing until it reached its peak in 1846. The impact on Lahaina, the whaling ship's favorite stopping place, was intense. Reverend Baldwin wrote, "Ten days since we had two whale ships, next day ten came in, and the next day six. From that time to this, scarce an hour but we have seen from one to half a dozen coming down the channel - fifty ships now here."

While the ships stocked up with food (beef, hogs, goats, young turkeys, ducks and other fowl as well as bananas, melons, pumpkins, onions, squashes, and Irish and sweet potatoes from Kula), fresh water, and other supplies, the crewmen were given liberty.

As one of several captains pointed out, "The life of a whaler is one of hardship and toil, and upon his arrival at your port, he needs rest and relaxation...'tis absolutely necessary to the lives of the sailors that they should have liberty days...."

There was, throughout this period, a running disagreement between the missionaries and government officials on one side, and the sea captains, supported by brothel and grog shop owners on the other, about how the sailors would get their "rest and relaxation." Occasionally riots broke out, at the instigation of incensed sailors, that threatened the lives of the missionaries and government officials who were trying to control the general free-for-all. The Reverend William Richards, who held the post before Baldwin, was famous for his defiance of the angry drunken sailors who blamed him for the restrictions on their pleasures.

In an 1857 report, one respectable resident wrote to a mercantile house: "Yesterday (the 14th) and the day before have been celebrated for riot; between two and three hundred drunken sailors and five to eight hundred natives in close combat. Yesterday they fought with clubs and stones; some fifty stones would be flying in the air at once. Several black eyes and bruised heads was the result. The police were overpowered, and prisoners rescued, and the sailors took the town, fair-play....For four hours yesterday, no person could venture into the streets without endangering his life."
Besides preaching, Baldwin was a medical doctor who was tireless in his efforts to take care of the sick. Behind Baldwin House is Hale Aloha, a coral stone church built in the 1850s by parishioners who were grateful for their rescue from a smallpox epidemic that devastated Oahu, where between 5,000 and 6,000 people died of smallpox in 1853.

Along with other medical practitioners, Baldwin visited the entire island on horseback, convincing hundreds of natives to be vaccinated. The natives trusted the man because he had already spent years traveling in bad weather for days at a time to far-flung, outlying areas as well as braving choppy seas to treat patients on Lanai and Molokai.

For many years Hale Aloha, which was completed in 1858, served as a church, meetinghouse, and mission school. It was the site for the first government school after it no longer served as a mission house. This government school was moved to Front Street, where it became King Kamehameha III School. In 1974, the County of Maui restored Hale Aloha.

In Hawaii, the Baldwin name is synonymous with missionaries and success. (It is not surprising to learn that Baldwin was one of the early supporters of the embryonic sugar industry.) Beginning with Baldwin's six children, the family's descendants have been prominent in island business, agriculture, ranching, tourism, commerce and philanthropy. The Alexander and Baldwin Company is so well-known it is listed in the phone directory as "A & B"

 

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Braddah-Nics Lexicon

STANDARD: Russell, that is so foolish, I don't know what to say.
BRADDAH-NICS: Russell, 'as so babooze I no can handle!

* * * * * * * *

STANDARD: What a perfect illusion!
BRADDAH-NICS: Ja-like real, no?

* * * * * * * *

STANDARD: Oh, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to be in here.
BRADDAH-NICS: Whatchu tellin' me, I no belong here?
 
 

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Local Grinds

Jin Dui

Ingredients:

Procedure:

Combine sugar, water, and whiskey. Empty rice flour in a large mixing bowl. Slowly add
combined liquid. Mix by hand (Do not knead as mixture may become unusable)

Mixture should be crumbly but hold together when squeezed. Add more water as needed.
Roll into large logs each about the size of a large cucumber. Break off pieces about 1 1/2 inches in diameter, make into
bowl shapes. Stuff with filling & roll into balls so that no seams or stuffing shows. Roll in sesame seeds
& squeeze so that sesame seeds stick.

Fry in hot oil. (Test oil temperature by sticking a wooden/bamboo chopstick in the oil - if tiny bubbles rise quickly
around the chopstick, oil is hot enough.) Roll the raw Jin Dui so that it touches oil on all sides before putting
in the next one. Press the Jin Dui gently with a wire ladle to shape the Jin Dui. Fry until sheen of oil
disappears quickly on the top, and Jin Dui is a dark golden brown.

Makes 36

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Spotlight On…

Molokai

Formed by thee volcanic "events", Molokai is a long, narrow island only 38 miles long and 10 miles wide that has been called "the most Hawaiian island." Kumu hula (hula teacher) John Kaimikaua says, "Molokai is a sacred land...a spiritual island where the land is meant for a sacred purpose." Molokai is the cradle of Hawaiian dance and Hawaiian aquaculture.

In ancient times, Molokai was a rich land, blessed by the bountiful sea. There were fishponds along the southern coastlines of both the east and west mountains and much of the land was planted in sweet potato. On the wetter eastern side, taro was grown in large quantities. The people were farmers, fishermen and craftspeople, and the island was home to the most knowledgeable and spiritually powerful master craftsmen, kahuna .

Such a rich place was a prize that was coveted by neighboring ali'i, chiefs, and at least one of them led a conquering force to take the island. The people called on their kahuna, who prayed to their Dieties and especially to the goddess Hina, who is also goddess of the moon and mother of Molokai. The kahuna asked for protection for the land and for the people's safety.

When the large force landed, every man who raised his hand to attack dropped dead. The only one left standing was the chief, who was allowed to leave the island so he could spread the story of the power of effective prayer.

The people who live on Molokai are very much aware of this idea and ideal. They keep to the old ways and resist what they consider to be too much deviation from the traditions that preserved the island for centuries.

The island has one of the largest heiau, temple platforms, in the Pacific, a four-tiered stack of sacred stone where novices were trained and human sacrifice was practiced. This heiau, known as li'ili'opae, dates from between 1100 to 1300. It is up to 22 feet high, 87 feet wide and 286 feet long. Legend says it was built in a single night by menehune, who carried stones in the dark from a valley across the island.

Molokai is the fifth-largest island in the Hawaiian chain, with a total land area of 261 square miles.

One woman, who married a Molokai man and lived on the island for a number of years before moving away to better job opportunities, says, "Everybody Molokai accepts is Hawaiian. It does not matter what their birth certificate says." The key phrase in that is, "Molokai accepts." Not everyone who comes to this island is accepted, but those who are enfolded in the warmth of the people and the sanctuary and refuge offered by this place never forget the beauty of Molokai.

The people and the island are unpretentious. Aloha hasn't gone plastic. There is an innate warmth and integrity in the people and their simple lifestyle. Molokai is just what it is: a place where the old ways are remembered and still followed, and a place of incredible beauty.

The little island has Hawaii's largest waterfall, the greatest collection of fishponds in the state, and the world's tallest sea cliffs as well as the historic Hansen's Disease (leprosy) colony at Kalaupapa, a wildlife preserve and lots of wilderness with enough wild pigs, Axis deer and wild birds to tempt any hunter.
 

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