Dengler Images

A VERY popular tourist spot on the Big Island is Rainbow Falls, which sits in Wailuku River State Park just west of downtown Hilo on the Big Island, where the Wailuku River drops about 80 feet over a ledge of ancient lava. The Hawaiian name Waiānuenue means "rainbow seen in water" — on sunny mornings, sunlight hits the mist. Hawaiian legend says the cave behind the falls is the home of Hina, the mother of the demigod Māui.

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An unidentified hiker pauses above the breaking surf at Onomea Bay, along the trail near the Hawaiʻi Tropical Botanical Garden near Papaʻikou on the Hāmākua Coast. The rock taking the pounding here is basalt from the lava flows that built this side of the island, and the relentless wave action is an example of coastal erosion slowly wearing away at stone.

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▪️Along the Halemaʻumaʻu Trail in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, the coiled frond of a young fern — called a crozier or fiddlehead — showcases one of the oldest growth forms in the plant kingdom. Ferns have unfurled this way for more than 360 million years, long before flowering plants existed. Several fern species along the trail exhibit the same spiral emergence, including the native ʻamaʻu (Sadleria cyatheoides) and the larger hāpuʻu (Cibotium spp.), both foundational to the rainforest ecosystem here.

The tightly wound spiral protects the delicate developing tissue as it pushes upward, unrolling only once it clears potential hazards. In Hawaiian culture, the fiddlehead symbolizes new life and new beginnings, and fern imagery appears widely in traditional art, chant, and hula. Early Hawaiians also ate the young fronds of hāpuʻu in times of scarcity.

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