When Michael and I were in Hawaii a month ago, we spent an afternoon wandering through downtown Hilo. We came upon a thrift store and decided to go in and look at the racks of old Hawaiian shirts we could see from the window. We leafed through the shirt like the pages of a giant botanical book, leafed through anthuriums and orchids, through hibiscus and palm fronds. We leafed through color after color; yet, were strangely uninspired.

I decided to take a quick look through the books as we exited, just in case. And there it was, a large coffee table book devoted to tulips.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.  My head still swimming with orchids, anthuriums, et cie.

It was a volume I didn’t think I had, but in the moment was unsure. It wasn’t the best tulip book I’d ever seen. Mostly showy portraits of individual tulips or Dutch fields roaring with color. In many ways it was not unlike the shirts we just fondled and declined. It was only $5 and slim enough to fit into my collection back home between ‘TULIPA” by Christopher Baker and “TULIPS” by Peter Arnold.

But even at the price it seemed the wrong thing to bring back from our trip to paradise. So I passed on that rare find as out of place as blond-haired blue-eyed me on this South Pacific Isle.

Still the book came with me. Not as object. I wondered whether some mainlander who moved to paradise packed it along. Or had a wandering Hawaiian dragged it back from a spring visit to Holland or the Skagit Valley? Obviously it had become as useless as those Hawaiian shirts. I wondered, if I moved there, to Hawaii, would I bring my tulip books with. Would I miss tulips? Or forget about them.

Had the person who brought this book here, maybe all the way from Vermont, half a world away, became numb to the homesickness, the longing for winter and then spring. And with spring, tulips. Maybe other colorful flowers over the years seeped into their psyche and replaced the deep and familial feeling that tulips always gave.

Maybe it belonged to a Hawaiian so tired of the repetitious beauty of anthuriums, orchids, and palms, that the tulip had a great fascination for them. Like some northerners adore orchids, or anthuriums.

Michael and I entertain the idea of moving to the 50^th State, paradise, the Big Island. Would I pack my tulips library? It would be useless there, where flowers bloom everywhere all year, where a book of flower pictures in January is really not necessary. Where I could not grow tulips.

But Could I let my collection of tulip books sit in a mainland storage locker for 2 years, 5 years, 20 years, while I grew tan and old under a coconut palm? Could I abandon my passion for the genus? Replace it with another, like anthuriums?

Not orchids—way to many orchids.

Suddenly this love I feel for tulips, this tulipomania, feels crazy.  Just a flower among flowers, and even more flowers covering this planet.

Still I can’t take my eyes off of them, so more tulip posts to follow.

There are no willows in Hawai’i— let me phrase that differently. There are no native or invasive members of the genus Salix.

There is a water willow (Justicia betonica), not to be confused with Salix aquatic, also called water willow. J. betonica is a potentially serious weed, according to Wagner, Herbst and Sohmer the authors of the “Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawai’i”. This Asian member of the acanthus family grows along the weedy roadsides of the Big Island. Despite it’s common name, it is not a willow; neither is the water-loving primrose willow (Ludwigia octovalis) whose seeds may have been brought to the islands by the Polynesians on taro plants.

When I saw this bouquet of anthuriums and pussy willows in the lobby of a Waikiki hotel I had to wonder. Did they ship these spring twigs all the way from the mainland so a florist could add an “exotic” touch to this arrangement?

“Oh, those tiresome anthuriums… Oh, those ubiquitous orchids.  If I could only get some temperate twigs, something that said “Spring!” to add to my bouquets.

Pussy willows do say, “Spring!”

Before I left for Hawai’i I spent the good part of a day in the Skagit Valley north of here visiting the willow farm and basketry studio of Katherine Lewis and Steven Lospalluto at Dunbar Gardens  (pictured above and below). Steve was in the first stages of the late winter harvest. The day, splattered with rain and clouds, chilled and warmed me willy-nilly. I love this early time of spring, when spring is still winter officially, when swellings come on slowly, but you know we are moving forward.

Maybe it is my impatience that has made me a willow collector; I am up to 45 different species and cultivars of the genus Salix. I love their early emergence.

Besides what else would I grow? I live on the edge of a swamp in a flood plain. Actually what grows here quite spontaneously are willows. We have several species of native willow growing in scrambled abandon on the fringes of our property, introducing more seemed like the natural thing to do.

Willowing the willow’d land, like bringing coal to Newcastle.