Kou. Plate 7 from the book: Indigenous flowers of the Hawaiian Islands

Plate 7 of 44 from Isabella Sinclair's Indigenous flowers of the Hawaiian Islands (1885). The coloured illustration is accompanied by the following text describing the plant:

The Kou.

Cordia subcordata, Lam.

The kou is strictly a lowland tree, seeming indeed to flourish best close to the sea-coast. It does not attain any great size - seldom being over thirty feet in height, with a short trunk, rarely exceeding two feet in diameter at the base.

The kou is now rare, but it was once a favourite and frequent shade tree, for not only was it quick and easy of growth, but it was the tree from which Hawaiians made most of their handsome and useful wooden dishes. The wood is soft and easily wrought, yet very durable and of a most beautifully variegated brown colour susceptible of a fine polish. In spring many clusters of flowers, of a bright orange colour appear at the end of the branches, gracefully set amid the light green leaves. The flowers are followed by hard black nuts containing an edible kernel.

Fifty or sixty years ago, the kou was comparatively plentiful, but even then it never grew as a forest tree, and was generally found near human habitations. This has led some to suppose that it was imported at a remote period, and the supposition is somewhat strengthened by the fact that the same tree is found on one or two islands south of the equator. This belief, however, is founded upon such slender data, that it is much more probable the kou is truly indigenous; but, from some cause or other, has been gradually decreasing, until, at the present day, it is almost extinct.