The Gulick-Rowell Monkeypod

Local tradition says this monkeypod is 200 years old and arrived as a gift from an Indian prince, the first of its kind planted on the Garden Isle. The arithmetic does not hold. Monkeypod is generally recorded as reaching Hawaii around 1847, which is 179 years ago, so a 200-year-old specimen would predate its own species' arrival by two decades. It is a fine story about the tree and a poor fact about its age, which is why the age field here is empty. What is measured is the trunk: 8.53 metres round, the largest monkeypod figure on Kauai in the exceptional trees register, holding up a crown that covers the entire front yard of the Gulick-Rowell House. The house is the reason the address matters. Reverend Peter Johnson Gulick began building it in 1829 and Reverend George Rowell finished it by 1846, and the restoration project now working on it calls it the oldest house on Kauai. It is closed while that work goes on. The tree is in full view from Huakai Road, and the pin marks where to stand. Wood from one pruned limb has already been made into tables at Kokee Lodge. Nobody has dated it. If you know who put it in, tell us.