Poʻahiku Poni
Sunday Purple Color Challenge:
Uluhe fern, indigenous to Hawaiʻi, starts with a purple coated fiddlehead.
We have learned that this purple coating is like "sun block" for the fern while it is young until it get big enough to withstand the sun more. This particular fern thrives in more shady areas, so the purple "sun block" helps it to get established.
Uluhe fern grows well in rain forests and is also known as the "band-aid" of the Hawaiian Rain forest!
To explain more about that, this fern will naturally die off and therefore provide the next layer of leaf litter that eventually turns into dirt. (Majority of the Native trees in Hawaiʻi are adapted to the climate here and lack of signifacnt season changes, and therefore are no longer deciduous, meaning they do not drop their leaves at a certain time of the year)
I took this picture in my backyard :)
