Guav-spiracy!
Something seemed fishy in last week’s guava article (Honolulu Diary, 9/3). Five trees are listed as relatives of guava but they sounded wrong to me. Sure enough, according to the authoritative Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawai’i, two of the five species are not even in the same botanical family as guava. Only one, (an alien species), was in the same family and subfamily as guava.
Referring to the pro-guava activists as environmentalists is also a stretch. The president of the Good Shepherd Foundation, Sydney Ross Singer, is best known for his advocacy for the voracious Puerto Rican coqui frog. If he has his way we will be kept awake at night with their earsplitting calls and our disappearing native insects and birds will suffer. Environmentalists protect nature. They don’t encourage its destruction.
If the Good Shepherd Foundation has its way with our Hawaiian native forests, they will continue to be smothered under a vast creeping infestation of guava. It is wrong to introduce this fast-growing tree into the forest and then prohibit the insects that nature has carefully designed for its control. Biological control has successfully limited other weed infestations like the prickly pear cactus and lantana.
These harmful plants are still around but in more manageable numbers. It is expected that reacquainting the strawberry guava with its small insect nemesis will limit guava’s domination of the hawaiian forest without affecting even its closest botanical kin.
The control of the strawberry guava infestation is needed now to preserve our ancient natural heritage.
Larry Abbott, Honolulu
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