Events
Bishop Museum Celebrates National Native Plant Month, April 2025
Bishop Museum joins state and national organizations in celebrating April 2025 as National Native Plant Month and reminds the community of free resources to learn about and adopt native plants.
# Bishop Museum Celebrates National Native Plant Month, April 2025
As a Supporting Organization, the Museum reminds the community of free resources to learn about and adopt native plants.
Honolulu, Hawaiʻi — Bishop Museum, the State of Hawai'i Museum of Natural and Cultural History, joins state and national organizations in celebrating April 2025 as National Native Plant Month.
On April 5, 2025, Senate Resolution 157 was unanimously approved by the full Senate, designating April 2025 as National Native Plant Month. Bishop Museum extends its deep appreciation for Hawaiʻi Senator Mazie Hirono, Hawaiʻi Representatives Ed Case and Jill Tokuda, and members of our Congress for their leadership and support of this important effort to recognize and bring awareness to native plants.
A native plant is defined as one that has evolved over thousands of years in a specific geographic region, alongside local flora and fauna, without human intervention. They include large canopy trees, understory trees, shrubs, perennials, vines, and grasses that are indigenous to unique geographic regions with special soil, moisture requirements, and growing conditions.
Native plants are unique in that they have evolved alongside native bees, birds, and wildlife, and provide food and shelter for them. The intricate relationships that have developed between local flora and fauna are extremely specialized and cannot be replaced with ornamental, non-native plants.
"In Hawaiʻi, the role of native plants in our island ecosystems is especially critical," said Nicholas Walvoord, Bishop Museum Seed Bank collection manager, and botany and vertebrate zoology collection technician. "They not only provide essential resources for native wildlife, but also contribute significantly to Native Hawaiian practices and traditions. They truly are the foundation of Hawaiʻi's natural and cultural heritage."
As one of over 150 National Native Plant Month Supporting Organizations across the United States, Bishop Museum encourages the community to learn more about Native Hawaiian plants, their role in biodiversity, and how to care for them.
PlantsOfHawaii.org
The Museum's website, PlantsOfHawaii.org, is a species information and identification system for the flora of Hawaiʻi, with data for all documented native, naturalized, and cultivated flowering plants, cone-bearing plants, ferns, mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. The searchable database includes scanned images of specimens, photography from the field, scientific names, plants' occurrences throughout the major Hawaiian islands, and other natural history data.
In 2024, the Museum's Botany collection attained a digitization milestone of more than 180,000 specimens, the largest Native Hawaiian plant collection accessible online.
Grow Aloha Native Hawaiian Plant Adoption
Grow Aloha is a hui of plant adoption partners working together to restore Hawaiian plants and our relationships with them in urban areas. Bishop Museum is a proud partner and plant adoption site on Oʻahu, providing free native plant adoptions every third Wednesday of the month at the Kaiwiʻula Night Market held on Museum grounds (the next event will be on Wednesday, April 16, 2025).
The plant adoptions launched in celebration of 2025 as the Year of the Community Forests.
Signature Galleries
Several of Bishop Museum's Signature Galleries highlight Hawaiʻi's native plants, including the Nā Ulu Kaiwi'ula Native Hawaiian Garden, Richard T. Mamiya Science Adventure Center, and various displays in Hawaiian Hall and Pacific Hall.
2025 Science & Sustainability Festival
Bishop Museum's annual signature event, the Science & Sustainability Festival, features the Museum's natural science collections, special keynote presentations, and dozens of community partner booths representing science, culture, sustainability, and conservation.
This year, the family friendly event will be held on Saturday, May 31, 2025 from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. throughout the Museum's 15-acre campus.
The Festival provides opportunities for attendees to engage with Museum botanists and technicians, view their collections, and learn about Bishop Museum's Seed Bank, a native seed storage facility that includes everything needed to process and store up to 5 million seeds, enough to restore up to 5,000 acres of land every year.
The Festival will also be the public opening of a new Signature Gallery at the Museum, Kamālaʻulahiwa. The new structure, adjacent to the Museum's Nā Ulu Kaiwi'ula Native Hawaiian Garden, will be a community education space featuring new displays and special programming to help inspire community members to expand their knowledge of traditional land management, local food security, and a sustainable future for Hawaiʻi.
Online Learning Center
Bishop Museum's Online Learning Center includes family and keiki activities focused on the Museum's Botany collection and native plants.
For more information on Bishop Museum's Botany collection, please visit BishopMuseum.org/Explore.
About Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, the State of Hawaiʻi Museum of Natural and Cultural History
Bishop Museum’s mission is to inspire our community and visitors through the exploration, celebration, and perpetuation of the extraordinary history, culture, and environment of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. The Museum was founded in 1889 by Charles Reed Bishop in memory of his wife Bernice Pauahi Bishop, a royal descendant of King Kamehameha I. Today, the Museum thrives as an educational center for the community and is widely regarded as the world’s premier institution for Hawaiian and Pacific content.
Bishop Museum’s vast collections of more than 25 million objects and specimens represent nine disciplines and include more than 22 million biological specimens, over 2 million cultural objects, 115,000 historical publications, and 1 million photographs, films, works of art, audio recordings, and manuscripts. These collections tell the stories of the cultures and biodiversity of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific as well as the proud legacy of scholarly research spanning 130 years.
Bishop Museum proudly serves more than 200,000 visitors each year, including 20,000 children on school visits. Guests are encouraged to pre-plan their trip to #HawaiisMuseum with its free digital guide, available through Bloomberg Connects.
To learn more about the Museum’s research, collections, exhibits, and programs, visit BishopMuseum.org, follow @BishopMuseum on Facebook and Instagram, visit Bishop Museum’s YouTube channel, or call (808) 847-3511. Bishop Museum is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Bishop Museum is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer, and welcomes applicants from the military, veterans, and those with disabilities. Learn about careers at Bishop Museum at BishopMuseum.org/Careers and on its LinkedIn page.
Bishop Museum Press is Hawaiʻi’s oldest book publisher and one of the first scholarly publishers in the Western Hemisphere, and has published over 1,200 titles and distributed over 1 million books in 72 countries worldwide. Bishop Museum hosts a restaurant and gift shop on campus, Tūtū’s Place by Highway Inn and Shop Pacifica by Nā Mea Hawaiʻi.