Step onto our farm in Holualoa and you feel it immediately. The air carries the sweet, almost jasmine-like scent of Kona coffee blossoms. Somewhere above you, the red puff of a lehua flower catches the morning light. Wind moves through the canopy in long, slow waves, and the whole hillside seems alive in a way that is hard to describe but impossible to miss. This is the Big Island at roughly 1,400 feet of elevation, draped in cloud and volcanic soil, where the land itself tells a story that stretches back millions of years.
Hawaii is one of the most botanically extraordinary places on Earth. Roughly 1,400 plant species arrived on these islands naturally, without any human help, and then evolved here in isolation until they became something entirely their own. The result is a flora that exists nowhere else on the planet, shaped by volcanic terrain, shifting microclimates, and the sheer distance between Hawaii and the nearest continent. That isolation is exactly what made these islands a natural laboratory unlike any other.
Here is something that surprises many first-time visitors. Most of the flowers they photograph during a Hawaii trip are not Hawaiian at all. Plumeria came from Central America. Anthurium arrived from Colombia. Bird of paradise originated in South Africa. These plants are beautiful, and they are everywhere, but they are not native. The true native flora of Hawaii is quieter, wilder, and far more remarkable, and it is hiding in plain sight for anyone who knows where to look.
At Buddha's Cup, we grow māmaki on our Holualoa farm. We share our land with native species. Our farm tours walk guests through a botanical world shaped by the same native Hawaiian plants and volcanic forces that have defined this landscape for centuries. We care about this world deeply, not just because it is beautiful, but because it is irreplaceable.
This guide is for anyone who wants to understand what they are actually looking at when they walk through a Hawaiian forest. We cover ʻōhiʻa lehua, the sacred tree that grows on fresh lava. We explore māmaki, the native healing tea plant we grow right here on the farm. We introduce you to the yellow hibiscus state flower, the critically endangered naʻu gardenia, and the broader cultural world these plants inhabit. By the time you finish reading, you will see the Hawaiian landscape with completely different eyes.
What Makes Hawaiian Plants Truly Native?
Before we walk through the individual plants, it helps to understand the vocabulary botanists and conservationists use. These distinctions are not just academic. They shape how we talk about Hawaiian flora, how we protect it, and what we stand to lose if we do not pay attention.
Native vs. Endemic vs. Introduced: The Definitions That Matter
A native plant is one that arrived in Hawaii without any human assistance. Seeds may have drifted on ocean currents, been carried by wind across thousands of miles of Pacific, or arrived in the digestive systems of migratory birds. These plants established themselves naturally and became part of the ecosystem over thousands to millions of years.
An endemic plant takes that definition one step further. An endemic species is native to Hawaii and found absolutely nowhere else on Earth. It did not just arrive here and survive. It evolved here, changed here, and became something entirely new. When an endemic Hawaiian plant goes extinct, that species is gone from the planet forever. There is no backup population somewhere else.
An introduced plant, sometimes called exotic or alien, arrived with human help. Some introductions were intentional, like sugarcane and pineapple brought for agriculture. Others were accidental, like seeds hitching rides in packing materials or on the soles of boots. Some introduced plants are benign. Others have become invasive, spreading aggressively and displacing the native species that Hawaiian ecosystems depend on.
Hawaii's remarkable isolation, sitting more than 2,400 miles from the nearest continent, made it one of the world's greatest natural laboratories for plant evolution. When a seed arrived on these islands, it found a place with no existing competitors in its niche, no familiar predators, no co-evolved diseases. The result was what biologists call adaptive radiation: one ancestor species diversifying into dozens or hundreds of new forms to fill the available ecological space. The Hawaiian silversword alliance, for example, includes shrubs, trees, vines, and rosette plants that all descended from a single tarweed ancestor from California.
Researchers have documented roughly 1,400 native Hawaiian plant species, and thousands of introduced species are now also documented. A checklist of over 3,000 native and invasive plants is now available to researchers and the public, a resource that underscores just how thoroughly the botanical landscape of Hawaii has been transformed since human arrival. Organizations like PlantNative.org maintain starter lists of native Hawaiian plants suitable for residential and commercial landscaping, making it easier for homeowners and businesses to restore some of what has been lost.
Why Hawaiian Plant Diversity Is So Extraordinary
Twelve broad categories of endemic plant groups have been highlighted in botanical research as particularly significant to Hawaii's natural heritage. Within those categories, the variation is stunning. A single species like ʻōhiʻa lehua can appear as a low creeping shrub on a wind-blasted lava field or as a towering forest tree in a wet upland valley. This kind of morphological flexibility within a single species speaks to the evolutionary pressure these plants have experienced across different elevations, rainfall zones, and soil types.
The cultural dimension matters just as much as the ecological one. Native Hawaiian plants are woven into the Hawaiian language itself. Many plants have names that describe their appearance, their use, or their spiritual significance. They appear in oli (chant), in hula, in the names of places across the islands. They were the original medicine cabinet, the original building materials, the original dyes and fibers. To lose a native plant is to lose a thread from a cultural fabric that took centuries to weave.
The Conservation Crisis: What We Stand to Lose
The numbers are sobering. On average, 60 native species have become extinct from each of the main Hawaiian islands. Hawaii is sometimes called the extinction capital of the world, and that designation is not an exaggeration. Habitat loss, introduced predators like rats and pigs, and the spread of invasive plants have all taken a severe toll. Add the emergence of new plant diseases, and the picture becomes even more urgent.
Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death, a fungal disease we will discuss in detail in the next section, is currently killing native trees at an alarming rate on the Big Island and beyond. It is the kind of threat that can reshape an entire forest in a matter of years.
Supporting farms and businesses that actively steward native plants is one meaningful, tangible response. When you visit Buddha's Cup, when you buy our māmaki tea, when you join one of our farm tours, you are participating in an economy that keeps native-plant-friendly land in production. That is not a small thing. Learning about native Hawaiian plants and the history of this land is a first step. Choosing where you spend your time and money here is the next one.
ʻŌhiʻa Lehua: The Sacred Tree That Grows on Lava
If you spend any time on the Big Island, you will see ʻōhiʻa lehua. You may not recognize it at first. It can look like a low shrub hugging a black lava field, or it can rise above you as a full canopy tree in a misty upland forest. What gives it away is the flower: a bright, explosive puff of red stamens that looks like nothing else in the Hawaiian landscape. Once you know what you are looking for, you will see it everywhere.
Botanical Profile and Where to Find ʻŌhiʻa Lehua
The botanical name is Metrosideros polymorpha, and it belongs to the family Myrtaceae, the same family that includes guava, eucalyptus, and cloves. The name polymorpha means "many forms," and it is one of the most accurate species names in botany. This is an endemic Hawaiian tree, found on all the main Hawaiian islands except Niʻihau and Kahoʻolawe, and it grows across an extraordinary elevation range from sea deepen to around 7,200 feet.
ʻŌhiʻa lehua thrives in mesic to wet conditions, tolerates full sun and part shade, and can grow on lava flows that are only decades old. Its root systems are shallow and wide-spreading, allowing the tree to anchor in the thinnest possible layer of decomposed rock. Its leaves are often covered in fine silvery hairs that reflect sunlight and reduce water loss, an adaptation that helps it survive on exposed, sun-blasted terrain where few other plants could manage.
The height varies enormously depending on where the tree is growing. On open lava fields, it may stay below knee height for decades. In the sheltered wet forests of the windward Big Island, it can reach 30 to 50 feet or more, forming the dominant canopy layer. This variability is part of what makes the species so ecologically important. It fills multiple roles in multiple habitats, from pioneer species on new lava to mature forest anchor.
The best places to see ʻōhiʻa lehua on the Big Island include Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, where the trees are literally growing on lava fields that formed within living memory. The Koʻolau Mountains on Oʻahu and Kōkeʻe State Park above the Nā Pali Coast on Kauaʻi also support significant ʻōhiʻa populations. Maui Nui Botanical Gardens is a wonderful destination for anyone who wants to study the species in a curated setting alongside other native Hawaiian plants.
Read more about this remarkable tree on our dedicated ʻōhiʻa lehua post, where we go into even more depth about its ecology and significance to the Kona region.
The Flower, the Legend, and the Rain
The lehua flower is not what most people expect from a flower. There are petals, but they are small and easy to overlook. What you notice are the stamens: dozens of long, projecting threads, each tipped with a tiny anther, bursting outward in every direction from the center of the bloom. The effect is like a firework frozen in plant form. In red, it is striking. In yellow or orange, two color variants that also occur naturally, it is equally arresting.
Blooming can happen at almost any time of year, though it often intensifies during certain seasons depending on local rainfall patterns and elevation. This unpredictability is part of the plant's ecology: by not blooming on a fixed schedule, it maintains relationships with native birds like the ʻapapane and ʻiʻiwi, honeycreepers that have co-evolved with lehua flowers and depend on the nectar. When you see a lehua in bloom, there is a good chance a native bird is nearby.
One common mistake for new visitors is confusing ʻōhiʻa lehua with the ornamental bottlebrush species introduced from Australia. Both have brushy, stamen-dominated flowers, but bottlebrush flowers grow along a central spike while lehua flowers cluster at branch tips. Up close, the leaf shape and bark texture are also quite different.
The legend of the lehua flower is one of the most beautiful stories in Hawaiian oral tradition. The volcano goddess Pele fell in love with a young man named Ohia, but he was devoted to a woman named Lehua. In her jealousy, Pele transformed Ohia into a twisted tree. The other gods, moved by Lehua's grief, could not undo what Pele had done, but they transformed Lehua into the flower that blooms on the tree, so the two would never be separated. The legend says that if you pick a lehua blossom from its tree, the sky will weep rain. The tears are Ohia and Lehua, mourning their separation.
This story is not merely poetic. It carries a practical instruction: leave the lehua flower on its tree. In a forest where native pollinators and birds depend on those blooms, that instruction makes ecological sense as well as cultural sense. The legend and the ecology align in a way that speaks to the deep environmental wisdom embedded in Hawaiian tradition.
The cultural significance of lehua extends beyond this single story. The blossom appears throughout Hawaiian chant and poetry as a symbol of love, beauty, and the volcanic nature of the islands themselves. It is associated with Pele, with her sister Hiʻiaka the forest guardian, and with the concept of the land as a living relative rather than a resource to be used.
Metrosideros polymorpha is literally named for its many forms, and it is considered one of the most morphologically variable tree species in the world. Botanists have described multiple varieties, and there is ongoing research into whether some of those varieties are distinct enough to be considered separate species. If one plant represents the complexity and beauty of native Hawaiian flora, it is this one.
Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death: Understanding the Threat and How to Help
Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death, known as ROD, is caused by two fungal pathogens in the genus Ceratocystis. The disease was first identified on the Big Island around 2014 and has since killed hundreds of thousands of ʻōhiʻa trees. The progression is horrifying in its speed. A tree that appears completely healthy can be dead within weeks of showing the first symptoms. Leaves go from green to brown without the yellowing stage that usually signals stress. Because the disease is in the vascular tissue, by the time the crown is affected, the tree is already beyond saving.
The primary transmission vector is human activity. The fungi spread through soil particles and infected wood. When hikers walk through an infected forest and then continue to another trail without cleaning their boots, they can carry the pathogen on the soles of their shoes. Equipment used in infected areas, vehicles driving through infected zones, even water moving downslope can carry Ceratocystis spores to new locations.
What can you do? The answer is straightforward, even if it requires a moment of intentionality. Brush and wash your boots before and after hiking in any ʻōhiʻa forest. Do not move wood from forested areas. Stay on marked trails and paths. At Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, brush stations are available at trailheads, and using them is one of the most direct acts of conservation available to any visitor.
At Buddha's Cup, we ask our farm tour guests to stay on designated paths. This is not just about crop protection. It is about protecting the broader ecosystem our farm exists within. The same native Hawaiian plants and volcanic soil that make Kona coffee exceptional are also the foundation of native Hawaiian forest health. We take that responsibility seriously, and we hope our guests will too.
Supporting organizations working on ROD research and native forest restoration is another meaningful step. The University of Hawaiʻi, the USDA Forest Service, and groups like the Native Hawaiian Plant Society are all actively engaged in this work. When you choose to learn, to care, and to act with awareness during your time on the Big Island, you become part of the response to this crisis.
Māmaki: Hawaii's Native Healing Tea Plant
Of all the native Hawaiian plants we could talk about, māmaki is the one we know most personally. We grow it on our Holualoa farm. We harvest it by hand. We dry it and prepare it and serve it to our guests. We have watched visitors taste it for the first time and go quiet for a moment, the way you do when something is genuinely surprising and good. Māmaki is not just a plant we sell. It is a plant we believe in, and its story is one of the most compelling in all of Hawaiian botany.
What Is Māmaki and Where Does It Grow?
The botanical name is Pipturus albidus, and it belongs to the family Urticaceae, the nettle family. That botanical placement surprises people. Nettles are known for their sting. But māmaki carries no stinging hairs. It is a soft-leaved, approachable shrub or small tree that grows in the moist to wet forest understory, often alongside ʻōhiʻa lehua at mid-elevation. The leaves are broad and slightly wrinkled, pale green on top and lighter underneath, with a texture that is almost papery when dried.
Māmaki is endemic to Hawaii. You will not find it growing wild anywhere else in the world. It favors the same kinds of shaded, moist forest environments that the Big Island's windward and upper-elevation terrain provides in abundance. At Holualoa, our farm sits at an elevation where morning clouds and afternoon sun create exactly the kind of humid, light-dappled conditions that māmaki loves.
The plant produces small white to pale purple berries that are an important food source for native Hawaiian birds, particularly the native honeycreepers. This ecological relationship is a good reminder that native plants do not exist in isolation. They are part of a web of relationships that includes native insects, birds, fungi, and soil organisms. When one piece of that web is lost, the others are affected.
Traditional Native Hawaiian use of māmaki goes back generations. The leaves were brewed into a tea used to support overall wellness, and the plant was incorporated into traditional healing practices in multiple ways. It was used for postpartum recovery, to support digestion, and as a general tonic for maintaining health. That knowledge was not random. It reflected centuries of careful observation and accumulated wisdom about how the plant's constituents interact with the human body.
When you visit our farm and join one of our tours, you can see māmaki growing exactly where it belongs: in the moist, shaded margins of our Holualoa property, alongside coffee trees and other plants that share its preference for elevation and humidity. We will show you what it looks like in the ground, let you touch the leaves, and explain the journey from plant to cup. Read more about this special plant and its place in Hawaiian life by exploring our post on māmaki.
The Health Benefits of Māmaki Tea
Māmaki tea is naturally caffeine-free. That is not a small thing. For anyone managing caffeine intake, dealing with sleep issues, looking for an afternoon or evening option, or simply wanting to drink something genuinely Hawaiian without the stimulant effect, māmaki fills a real gap. It sits in the same daily ritual space as chamomile or peppermint tea, but it is local, it is endemic, and it has a nutritional profile that those imported herbal teas cannot match.
The leaves contain catechins, the same family of antioxidants found in green tea and associated with a wide range of health-supporting effects. They also contain chlorogenic acids, compounds studied for their role in glucose metabolism and cardiovascular health, and rutin, a flavonoid associated with the health of veins and capillaries. These are not folk medicine claims. These compounds have been studied in peer-reviewed literature, and māmaki contains them in meaningful concentrations.
The traditional uses that Native Hawaiian healers developed over centuries align closely with what modern research suggests about these compounds. Māmaki tea was used to support digestion, and chlorogenic acids are known to support digestive enzyme activity. It was used for cardiovascular support, and rutin and catechins are both associated with healthy blood pressure and cholesterol metabolism. It was used for general vitality, and antioxidants in general support the body's ability to manage oxidative stress.
Māmaki's potential role in immunity is another area of genuine interest. The antioxidant content of the leaves supports the immune system's baseline function, and traditional use consistently included māmaki as a strengthening, restorative plant rather than a treatment for specific illness. That framing, support rather than cure, matches well with how contemporary wellness practitioners talk about adaptogens and tonic herbs.
As a caffeine-free option, māmaki tea is genuinely versatile. You can drink it in the morning alongside your Kona coffee, or you can drink it in the evening as a wind-down ritual. It has a mild, slightly earthy flavor with a pleasant grassiness that is easy to enjoy plain. Some people add local honey. Some people brew it cold. The plant is forgiving, and the tea is accessible even for people who have never tried herbal teas before.
What māmaki is not is a substitute for medical care. We share its traditional uses and its nutritional profile because they are genuinely interesting and genuinely relevant. But we always encourage people to work with their healthcare providers when making decisions about their health. What we can say with confidence is that drinking māmaki tea is a genuinely pleasant, genuinely Hawaiian experience with real nutritional value behind it.
How We Grow and Serve Māmaki at Buddha's Cup
Our māmaki starts on the farm in Holualoa. The plants grow in the natural understory conditions our elevation and location provide: morning mist, filtered light, well-drained volcanic soil with excellent organic matter content. We do not force the plants into production schedules that stress them. We let them grow at the pace that suits the land, and we harvest leaves by hand when they are mature and ready.
After harvest, the leaves are carefully dried. The drying process matters. Done correctly, it preserves the catechin content and the delicate grassy flavor of the fresh leaf. Done incorrectly, it destroys the compounds that make the tea valuable and produces something flat and unappealing. We pay attention to this process because the quality of the final cup depends on it.
The finished tea is available as loose-leaf at Buddha's Cup, and it makes an exceptional gift. If you are shopping for someone who is health-conscious, curious about Hawaiian culture, or simply appreciates something local and meaningful, māmaki tea checks every box. It travels well. It keeps well. And it tells a story that most people have never heard before.
When you visit the farm, we love to offer a full Hawaiian beverage experience: Kona coffee for those who want the full-caffeine, richly flavored experience that this region is famous for, and māmaki tea for those who prefer something gentler, or who simply want to try both. Sitting on the farm with a cup of each, looking out over the coffee trees with the Pacific visible in the distance, is one of those experiences that people remember for years.
Our farm tours are where the story really comes alive. You see the māmaki plant in the ground. You learn about how it was used traditionally and how we care for it today. You taste the tea at the source, in the place where it was grown. That connection between plant and cup is something you simply cannot replicate by reading about it, though we hope this guide gets you close.
Hawaiian tea culture is rich and layered, and māmaki sits at its center as the most distinctly endemic of Hawaii's tea plants. To explore that cultural context more deeply, visit our piece on Hawaiian tea culture, where we trace the traditions surrounding tea and plant medicine that have shaped how people in Hawaii relate to the land.
Other Notable Native Hawaiian Plants Worth Knowing
ʻŌhiʻa lehua and māmaki deserve the spotlight they get in this guide. But the native Hawaiian flora extends far beyond these two remarkable plants. There are hundreds of species worth knowing, and even a brief introduction to a few of them will change the way you read the landscape around you during your time on the Big Island.
Maʻo Hau Hele: The Yellow Hibiscus and Hawaii's State Flower
Most people are surprised to learn that the red hibiscus they see everywhere in Hawaii is not native. The ornamental hibiscus cultivars sold at garden centers and grown in hotel landscapes are largely hybrids of species from Asia, the Pacific islands, and elsewhere. The true native Hawaiian hibiscus is a different plant entirely.
Maʻo hau hele, known botanically as Phibiscus brackenridgei, is Hawaii's official state flower. It is bright yellow, about two to three inches across, with the characteristic five-petal form of the hibiscus family and a prominent central column of stamens. It grows in dry to mesic lowland forests, habitats that have been severely reduced by agriculture and development over the past two centuries. As a result, maʻo hau hele is endangered. Seeing one in the wild is a genuine privilege.
There is also koʻoloa ʻula, a native red hibiscus species, that is equally rare and equally beautiful. These plants remind us that the icons of Hawaiian imagery, the hibiscus flower, the lei, the tropical color palette, often have native counterparts that are wilder, rarer, and more deeply connected to the land than the introduced varieties that have come to represent them.
Hawaiian hibiscus species are connected to a broader story about plant-based wellness that extends to the cultivated varieties many people now enjoy as tea. The antioxidant properties of hibiscus flowers are well documented, and the health-supporting potential of regular hibiscus tea consumption has been studied in multiple contexts. If you are interested in native Hawaiian plants and their wellness applications, hibiscus is a fascinating thread to follow.
Naʻu: Hawaiian Gardenia and the Scent of Old Hawaiʻi
If māmaki is the native plant we know through daily work on our farm, naʻu is the one that reminds us most sharply of what is at stake in Hawaiian conservation. Naʻu, the Hawaiian gardenia with the botanical name Gardenia brighamii, was once common across the dry lowland forests of the main Hawaiian islands. It produced creamy white flowers with an intense fragrance, one of the most beautiful scents in the Hawaiian landscape. The flowers were used in lei-making, and the fragrance was used to scent kapa cloth, the traditional bark cloth of Hawaiian culture.
Today, fewer than a handful of wild naʻu plants are known to exist. It is one of the most critically endangered plants in the United States. Conservation programs are working to propagate naʻu from these last surviving individuals and restore it to protected habitats, but the situation remains precarious. The naʻu is a symbol, specific and heartbreaking, of what Hawaii has lost and what it is still possible to lose.
Other native plants worth knowing include the hapu'u tree fern, species in the genus Cibotium, which grows to extraordinary heights in the wet forests of the Big Island and Kauaʻi, including the remarkable upland forests of Kōkeʻe State Park. Hapu'u ferns can reach 20 feet or more, and walking through a hapu'u forest feels like traveling back in time to a world before human arrival. The silversword, Argyroxiphium sandwicense, is another emblematic native: a rosette plant that grows only on the high slopes of Haleakalā on Maui and the high peaks of the Big Island, spending years accumulating energy before producing a single dramatic flowering stalk and then dying. Its silver leaves reflect the intense UV radiation of high-altitude Hawaiian sun in a way that seems almost otherworldly.
Each of these plants has a story as rich as the ʻōhiʻa lehua's. Each one represents evolutionary genius shaped by isolation, volcanic terrain, and time. Learning their names and their stories is a way of paying respect to the landscape that makes Hawaii what it is.
Hawaiian Plants That Connect to What We Grow at Buddha's Cup
Our farm exists within an ecosystem that native Hawaiian plants helped create. The volcanic soil, the cloud forest microclimate, the elevation, the moisture patterns: all of these were shaped over millennia by native plant communities and the geological forces beneath them. Kona coffee is not native to Hawaii, but it thrives here because the conditions that native plants evolved in happen to be perfect for coffee. That is not a coincidence. It is an alignment of ecology and agriculture that we think about every day.
Macadamia is another example. Macadamia trees are native to Australia, not Hawaii, but they have become deeply embedded in Hawaiian agriculture over the past century. When grown alongside coffee in intercropped systems, they provide shade, contribute organic matter to the soil, and diversify farm income. Our piece on native Hawaiian plants and sustainable farming explores the history and practice of macadamia intercropping in detail, with a focus on how these systems benefit both the farmer and the land.
White tea is another product that speaks to Hawaii's unique growing conditions. Tea plants, Camellia sinensis, are not native to Hawaii either, but the same elevation, humidity, and volcanic soil that shapes Kona coffee creates exceptional growing conditions for tea as well. Our post on native Hawaiian plants and white tea production explores what makes Hawaiian-grown white tea distinctive and why it is worth seeking out.
As for Kona coffee itself, the native Hawaiian plants and volcanic growing regions of the Kona Coast create conditions that cannot be replicated anywhere else in the world. The afternoon cloud cover that rolls in from the ocean, the well-drained lava soils, the warm days and cool nights at elevation: these are the same conditions that shaped native plant evolution here, and they are the reason Kona coffee has a flavor profile that is entirely its own.
At Buddha's Cup, we see the native plants, the coffee, the macadamia, the māmaki, and the volcanic landscape as parts of one continuous story. We did not create this land. We are guests here, doing our best to work with it rather than against it, and to share its story with everyone who comes to visit.
Hawaiian Plant Legends, Culture, and the Living Connection to the Land
To understand native Hawaiian plants fully, you need to understand the cultural framework in which they exist. For Native Hawaiians, plants are not simply flora. They are relatives. They are ancestors. They are living expressions of the same creative forces that brought the islands themselves into being. Approaching them from a purely scientific angle, while valuable, misses something essential about what they mean and what their loss truly costs.
Plants as Living Ancestors in Hawaiian Culture
In Hawaiian cosmology, the relationship between people and the natural world is understood through the concept of kinship. The Kumulipo, the Hawaiian creation chant that is one of the longest and most complex oral compositions in Polynesian tradition, names plants among the earliest beings to emerge from the primordial darkness. Plants are not resources that people use. They are elder relatives, beings that existed before humans and that humans have an obligation to honor and care for.
This cosmological framework has practical implications. When a traditional Hawaiian practitioner harvested a plant for medicine, they did not simply take what they needed and leave. They approached the plant with awareness and intention. They asked permission, in a sense, acknowledging the plant as a