Puakala. Plate 17 from the book: Indigenous flowers of the Hawaiian Islands

Plate 17 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 Puakala.

Argemone mexicana, Linn. var.

The subject of the present plate, like all the poppy family wherever found, is a conspicuous and beautiful object in the landscape.

The flower is a perfectly pure white, generally appearing most profusely in February and March, when it covers acres of ground with its delicate snowy bloom. It grows indiscriminately on rich or poor soil, from the sea-coast to a height of about one thousand feet. The leaves and stems, (as the name indicates - pua- "flower," kala- "rough"), are very prickly, making it a disagreeable plant to handle, and even troublesome to walk through when found growing extensively. It usually attains a height of from three to five feet. The flower is a most difficult one to represent, as it droops immediately after being gathered.

The puakala was noticed and mentioned by Captain Cook, and is one of the few native plants which do not seem to decrease, growing apparently as strongly and profusely now as it did a century ago. The roots contain a large precentage of opium, which the natives formerly used as an opiate in cases of toothache, neuralgia, etc.

The seeds have a wonderful vitality, the plant frequently making its appearance upon land that is allowed to lie fallow - or even upon land over which a fire has passed - where it certainly had not been seen for thirty or forty years, and the seed must have been in the ground for at least that length of time, being too heavy to be carried by the wind.