Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for June 20, 2026
Archive · June 20, 2026
LEHUA
say it: leh-HOO-ah
The blossom of the ʻōhiʻa tree — the flower of Hawaiʻi Island — and a word for someone beloved, an expert, a warrior.
What it means
In the Pukui-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary, lehua is the flower of the ʻōhiʻa tree — and the tree itself (Metrosideros polymorpha). The blossom is a burst of fine threads, most often red, sometimes salmon, orange, yellow, or white, and it was named the official flower of the island of Hawaiʻi by the Territorial legislature in 1923.
But lehua is never only a flower. The same word carries a second life: figuratively, lehua means a warrior, a beloved friend or relative, a sweetheart, an expert — a person who stands out the way a lehua blossom stands out against dark ʻōhiʻa wood.
It grows where little else will, the first life to take root on raw lava. To Hawaiians it is at once the most common tree on the mountain and one of the most cherished — the bloom of new land, sacred to Pele and to Laka of the hula.
How to use it
Lehua runs through Hawaiian names for trees, rains, and people:
Why this word matters
Digital Piko is rooted on Hawaiʻi Island, and lehua is that island’s own flower. It is the bloom you meet first on new lava — the plant that turns black rock back into forest. There may be no better picture of beginning again on solid ground.
There is also a love story in it. In the most-told version, Pele desired a young man named ʻŌhiʻa, but his heart belonged to a woman named Lehua. When he refused the goddess, she turned him into a gnarled tree; the gods, in pity, made Lehua its blossom, so the two would never be parted. It is said that to pick a lehua is to separate the lovers — and the sky answers with rain.
The most common tree on the mountain, and one of the most beloved.
That double meaning — a humble, hardy flower that is also the word for an expert, a warrior, a sweetheart — is very Hawaiian. Worth is not loud here. The lehua earns its place by being the first to grow and the last to give up, and the language honors that by making its name a name for the people we treasure.
Learn this one and you carry a piece of the island home: the red bloom on the lava, the soft Kanilehua rain over Hilo, and a quiet reminder that what is common and what is precious are often the very same thing.
Sources
Definition of lehua (“the flower of the ʻōhiʻa tree … the tree itself; figuratively, a warrior, beloved friend or relative, sweetheart, expert”) and the compounds ʻōhiʻa lehua and lehua mamo (“mamo-bird lehua,” a yellow-flowered form) from Mary Kawena Pukui & Samuel H. Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary (1986), via wehewehe.org. Lehua as the island flower of Hawaiʻi (designated 1923) and the Hilo rain Kanilehua (“[the rain that] lehua flowers drink”) are documented in Pukui, Elbert & Mookini, Place Names of Hawaiʻi, and the University of Hawaiʻi “Hawaiian Word of the Week.” The ʻŌhiʻa-and-Lehua moʻolelo is a widely recorded Hawaiian tradition. Diacritics (ʻokina, kahakō) shown as in the sources.