Jade Vine

Jade Vine

“Pua ʻōmaʻomaʻo” — the impossible turquoise bloom

The jade vine's color barely looks real — a luminous turquoise that appears almost nowhere else in nature. The pigment works with the flower's structure to bounce blue-green light back at you.

The blossoms hang in long chandeliers from a woody vine, each one shaped like a curved claw. In its native Philippine forests, bats hang upside down to drink from them and pollinate as they go.

The species is endangered in the wild as those forests disappear. In Hawaiʻi's botanical gardens it thrives, stopping visitors mid-path with a color they don't quite believe.