We passed under guava, ohia lehua and otherworldly hala trees.

Newcomb's tree snail has been reported living on small trees of the native plant Metrosideros polymorpha (ohia lehua).

We felt Laka amid the 40-foot koa trees, now protected by law, and the puffy red ohia lehua blossoms, and heard her along the babbling brooks.

Lured by the nectar of scarlet, salmon and yellow blossoms, native birds roosted in the stately ohia lehua tree, until an outbreak of avian malaria depleted their population.

Many of the small ohia lehua trees that are the main host tree for this tree snail have died as well as two trees that had marked Newcomb's tree snails in them.

Talk about a view: some rooms overlook Kilauea, one of the world's most active volcanoes, while others face native Hawaiian rainforest of ohia lehua and koa trees, accented by tall hapuu tree ferns.

As the four-mile round-trip hike continued north, we learned to identify native rain-forest koa and ohia lehua trees and a rare iliahi, or sandalwood, most of which was logged by 1826 for the China trade.

Gnarly ohia lehua trees lined the side away from the chasm, and abrasive blackberry bushes - not native to Hawaii, but thriving here on Kauai like so many other invasive imports - reached out their scratchy canes.

The larvae feed on Metrosideros species, including Metrosideros polymorpha.

Newcomb's tree snail has been reported living on small trees of the native plant Metrosideros polymorpha (ohia lehua).

The larger 'ohia (Metrosideros polymorpha), koa, and olapa are still found in remote gulches, but covered much of the lower mountainside just a century ago.

It grows in moist forests dominated by Acacia koa, Metrosideros polymorpha, and Dicranopteris linearis.

Ōhi'a Lehua, Metrosideros polymorpha, is a Hawaiian plant with roots that can grow suspended in extinct lava tubes.

It feeds mostly on snails, insects, and spiders and nests in native 'ōhi'a lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha) forests.

The larvae live on or near the tips of smaller roots of fallen Metrosideros polymorpha trees that are suspended parallel to the ground and covered with lichen.

Callistosporium vinosobrunneum grows solitarily to scattered on the rotting wood of the flowering evergreen tree ʻōhiʻa lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha).

This is today a catch-all native term for all butterflies; its origin seems to be pulelo "to float" or "to undulate in the air" + lehua, a Metrosideros polymorpha flower: an animal that floats through the air, from one lehua to another.