Spirit of Aloha | Features | September/October 2002

Blooming Business
By Janet Snyder

The Big Island provides fertile ground for anthurium growers, who are constantly coming up with new hybrids to stimulate the worldwide demand for the heart-shaped flower

Get off a Hilo or Kona flight, and chances are you'll see people carrying armloads of ruby-red anthuriums, arguably the signature flower of the Big Island.

No wonder. No other place in the United States grows more of the heart-shaped flower that reminds people of Valentine's Day year round.

The Big Island's rain-blessed east side, from Honoka'a to Puna, provides the ideal growing environment for the flower that graces florist shops across the nation and abroad. Annual rainfall of up to 165 inches, high humidity and night temperatures ranging from 55 degrees to 70 degrees make for perfect anthurium-growing conditions.

Major assistance and technical advice from the federal, state and county governments have also given the Big Island anthurium business an edge. So has the scientific community, namely the horticulture experts at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

Nurseryman Raymond Tanouye, who was one of the first Big Island farmers to grow anthuriums commercially, remembers when the anthurium started to take off as a hot commodity. "During World War II, you had GIs stationed in Hawai'i sending these bright tropical flowers home to Mama or their sweethearts on the Mainland," Tanouye recalls. "You had all these thousands of servicemen who suddenly knew what anthuriums were."

Tanouye was among a flock of local boys who returned home to the Big Island after college to grow anthuriums commercially. "At first it was a drop in the bucket and there was no real cut-flower business to speak of," Tanouye says. "If you sold $100,000 a year back in the '60s, you were doing great."

Raymond's brother, Harold Tanouye, tells how, in the old days, Hilo people grew anthuriums in their back yards in the shade provided by hapu'u tree ferns or citrus trees. There was no soil for growing, so people used sugar cane bagasse [mash] as a medium.

Aside from the long wait for the tree ferns or citrus trees to grow tall enough to provide shade, growing the red, pink and white flowers was easy.

And it was lucrative.

"Once people saw how valuable it was, it became the thing to do, to grow anthuriums," Harold explains. "Many Hilo homes were financed by the $35 to $60 extra monthly income."

To this day, lushly green Hilo is remarkable for the plethora of exotic tropical flowers growing in people's back yards. Growing prized heliconia, bird of paradise and anthurium is no big deal.

One of the big innovations among the growers was the shade-house, which helped to maximize their yield by protecting the flowers from too much light and exposure to pests. The Tanouyes were among the shade-house pioneers, and they also were among the first to grow their anthuriums in cinder instead of messy sugar cane bagasse.

Most of the Big Island growers were still feeling their way, selling most of their products to Honolulu florists. However, in the late 1950s and early '60s, along came longer-range aircraft, such as the DC-8s and 707s-a development that made all the difference for the Big Island anthurium farmers.

Raymond and Harold were among the first to start shipping their flowers to the Mainland and overseas. Both chose to sell to wholesalers instead of directly to retail florists.

But it hasn't been all clear skies since then.

Big Island anthurium growers have weathered their share of setbacks. In 1980, a mysterious blight hit the Big Island's anthuriums. After much horticultural detective work, the culprit was identified as a nasty, little-known bacteria called Xanthomonas campestris pathovar diffenbachiae, which caused the flowers to turn brown and die.

There was no chemical cure for it then, nor is there now. Meticulous eradication of infected plants to prevent the blight's spread is one of the reasons the business survived, according to Kelvin Sewake, Hilo-based county extension agent for UH-Manoa's College of Tropical Agriculture.

In the meantime, another curse loomed. "Anthurium and orchid growers began reporting that their crops were dying after the application of a fungicide called Benlate," Sewake says.

That was in 1991, and along with the blight, it was a one-two punch to the anthurium industry. It's taken nearly 12 years for the industry to get back on its feet. Raymond Tanouye was among those who exited anthurium growing, although today he maintains a flourishing foliage and flower nursery business.

Brother Harold stayed in and today his Green Point Nurseries is one of the three largest anthurium operations, with 22 acres in the Pana'ewa rain forest near Hilo, and another 5 acres in nearby Kurtistown.

Since the early '50s, Big Island nurseries have benefited mightily from the help of the tropical ag experts at UH-Manoa, who cooperated in developing a raft of new anthurium hybrids. No longer are there only red, pink and white anthuriums, they now come in lavender, purple, orange, green and multicolors. There are even ones with fragrances like Lily of the Valley and mint.

Dr. Heidi Kuehnle, one of the world's leading experts on anthuriums, co-authored with famed horticulturist Dr. Haruyuki Kamemoto the 1996 publication "Breeding Anthuriums in Hawai'i," considered the bible on anthurium growing.

Her laboratory at UH-Manoa has just released three new anthurium varieties: Hilo Moon and Hokule'a,
both whites; and a crimson called Waimea. "I'm so excited because I see so much happening on the anthurium scene here," Kuehnle says.

The university's anthurium breeding program, begun in 1950, is aimed at providing Hawai'i's nurseries with a diverse variety of plants to meet changing market demands. "One of our competitive strengths on the Big Island is all these breeding programs that have come up with new cultivars in anthuriums," says Sewake. "We have good-quality products, better colors and they last longer in the vase." (Big Island anthuriums can last a phenomenal two months in the vase.)

But nobody's being complacent. While Big Island growers were suffering through the blight-Benlate ordeal, foreign competition heated up. Worldwide demand for anthuriums rose, and so did the prices the flowers fetched. Flower-conscious Holland beefed up its anthurium hothouse operations and captured much of the European market; tropical Mauritius, off the coast of Africa, and several Caribbean nations have also gotten into the act.

Still, Big Island anthurium nurseries have remained competitive, especially on the Mainland, thanks to aggressive marketing worldwide and federal, state and county funds to promote the flower industry. Production in 2000 and 2001 held steady at about 1 million dozen
flowers.

"The growers are doing well and expanding their operations, and we have lots of new growers on the Big Island," Kuehnle says. "We're starting to see a lot of younger ones getting into the business."

A lot has improved since the industry's pioneer days. Growers are using more up-to-date business practices, and gone are the days of shipping anthuriums in wet copies of the local newspaper.

"Our growers are getting smarter about how to market their flowers, they're taking greater care about packing them for shipment, and they're selling them as bouquets while targeting special events," Kuehnle says.

Vern Inouye, another major Big Island grower, with 30 acres in Kurtistown, has taken to the Internet to sell his anthuriums. About four years ago, his company, Floral Resources, launched a Web site called www.hawaiitropicals.com. "One of our strategies going forward is to market to the end-consumer," Inouye says. "We've also acquired or developed new and unique varieties that can't be found anywhere else, and we're making great strides."

Horticulturist Kuehnle is optimistic about the Big Island's prospects. Since the Tanouye brothers entered the anthurium business in the early 1960s, the cut-flower business has tripled in the United States, and demand for blossoms is ever-rising.

"Per capita flower consumption in the United States is growing enormously; the only way is up," Kuehnle says. "Anthuriums are here to stay."

Free-lance writer Janet Snyder, a resident of the Big Island, has written several pieces for SPIRIT OF ALOHA's Dining column. Her last was a review of Cafe Pesto, which ran in the July/August 2002 issue.

Features Archive