Today I planted a bunch of black ti leaf plants. This is a special one that we were gifted from the Mala’ai many years ago. If I remember correctly, the person that successfully crossed a green and a red ti leaf created this black strain and donated it to the garden.
I chopped up a bunch of the stems into 8 inch pieces and kept some long pieces and left them in a bucket of water for more than a week. I changed out the water every other day and the stems started to grow new roots and shoots.
Ti leaf is one of the plants that the Hawaiians brought with them to Hawaii. Although not edible, the leaves have many uses like wrapping food for cooking like making laulaus for example. It’s also used for making leis and hula skirts, for serving food, for religious ceremonies, for fishing… There are probably a 101 ways to use to leaf. It’s also used to make the oldest form of alcohol in Hawaii.
In 1780 captain Nathaniel Portlock was the first guy to brew a beer like substance using baked and fermented ti leaf roots in order to treat scurvy for his crew. Ten years later in 1790, an escaped convict named William Stevenson from Australia ended up in Hawaii and was the first to distill this ti beer with sugar cane into spirits using two big iron pots. To the Hawaiians the two pots looked like a butt, and the Hawaiian word for butt is okole, so this is how it got its name okolehau. Stevenson wasn’t messing around and was basically distilling pure alcohol which was very popular with the sailors. It was so powerful that Kamehameha I banned the production and sale of any strong drink in 1818.
Originally posted on 2021-10-12, part of the daily planting journal behind Ha’a Chocolate’s food forest on Hawai’i Island.