Day 7: Smilax melastomifolia (hoi kuahiwi)

Just a quickie of a hoi kuahiwi plant I bought at the Volcano Farmer's Market. I can't wait to plant it in my yard, which is really just a part of a native Hawaiian wet forest. :). One thing nice about our Hawaiian greenbriar is that it doesn't have thorns! Over the course of time, the thorny ancestor that arrived in the islands eventually lost its thorns in the absence of large herbivores. That's why a lot of folks call our Hawaiian forests "benign". We don't have the prickly and poisonous vegetation found elsewhere ... unless they're recent introductions.

Can't wait to color this drawing!