Welcome to today’s episode with Nat Bletter, PhD, which we’re jokingly calling “episode 1 of the KavaCast”, since Nat, an ethnobotanist, prepared kava kava, or what the Hawaiians call 'awa for Daniel and Grant just prior to recording.
Kava is the root of Piper methysticum, a member of the black pepper family, with mildly intoxicating properties that have been used deep into antiquity by Polynesian people throughout the South Pacific. Since it’s often used to facilitate conversations, meetings, and negotiations, as well as to celebrate gatherings, we decided it would be a great beverage to consume while we discuss the plants of Hawaii.
Daniel and Grant are now back in Maine after 2 weeks of filming on the Hawaiian Islands. We were there making two episodes for our upcoming Season 3 of the WildFed TV show. The first few days we spent on Oahu, and our remaining time was spent on Molokai. You’ll hear all about our 10 days on Molokai in next week's show, but today's episode was recorded after a day of foraging with our guest Nat, both in his food forest garden, and out in a valley on the edges of Honolulu.
The Hawaiian Islands are of course incredible to visit, and as a wild-food enthusiast, they offer a very unique perspective, given that most of the edible species there are not truly native to the islands, but rather were brought by the Polynesian Voyagers who first settled the archipelago.
They came on double-hulled canoes and brought with them a suite of domesticated and semi-domesticated animals and plants, including pigs, dogs, and chickens, as well as plants like breadfruit, taro, kava, kukui nut, banana, coconut, mountain apple, turmeric, and sweet potato — just to name a few.
Being so isolated, and having no native mammals save a single bat species and a native seal, it's questionable whether it would have even been possible for Native Hawaiians to have thrived on these islands without these species they were traveling with.
In addition to the original plants and animals that came with those Polynesian voyagers, today there are many more animals and plants that have been brought from outside and are now essentially naturalized to the island chain. This makes it easy for foragers to focus on non-natives, since they’re abundant and harvesting them takes the pressure off the native species who are often threatened by new introductions.
Of course, the climate of the Hawaiian islands is also ideal for tropical fruit horticulture, so many species of exotic fruits are grown there today — such as cacao, which Nat grows and uses to produce his award-winning bars, including some made exclusively with Hawaiian-grown cacao beans. Or Mamey Sapote, which I’d describe as tasting like the filling of a pumpkin pie, just better. Or jackfruit, which tastes like juicy fruit gum. Or Macadamia nut, or pineapple, or mango… we could go on.
Our time in Hawaii had a big impact on us, and true to WildFed form, we didn’t just get to see these beautiful islands, or hear the sounds of the birds and the waves, or smell the tropical air, or feel the sand between our toes, we got to taste these islands too. That’s a big part of what we do with this project, bringing that 5th sense into our experience of a place. From the fruits and vegetables, to the animals, algaes, and even sea salts, we imbibed the place. Making a little bit of ourselves out of one of the planet's most special and unique locations.
There’s so much more we want to say about Hawaii, but we'll save some of that for next week, when we’ll go a layer deeper. For now, let’s enjoy a coconut shell of Kava with Nat Bletter, and learn a bit about the botany and ethnobotany of the Hawaiian islands.
View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/144