This column about hala is inspired by the canonization of our beloved St. Damien de Veuster.

The ground beneath a hala tree in Kalawao was Damien's first and last resting spot on Molokai. He spent his first night on the island there, right before becoming the permanent resident priest for the Hansen's disease patients of Kalaupapa. When he died on April 15, 1889, the Monday of Holy Week, he was buried under the same hala tree where he had slept on arrival. In 1936, at the request of the Belgian government, Damien was reburied at Louvain chapel, near his hometown of Tremelo.

The hala mirrors St. Damien in providing a prolific ministration to humankind.

Hala has prodigious health,economic and cultural significance across the Pacific region. It's an intricate, variable species, growing wild in semi-natural vegetation in seashore habitats, weathering blustery winds, wilting drought and withering salt spray.

Hala is legendary in Micronesian and Polynesian creation mythology, cosmogony (astrophysical origin and evolution of the universe), proverbs, riddles, songs and chants.

Products made from different parts of the tree helped sustain people across the Pacific. The trunk and hefty branches are routinely used for construction, fuel and compost, and made into headrests, fish traps, vases, string and glue or caulking for canoes. The unique aerial or prop roots are fabricated in house walls and supports, paint brushes, skipping ropes and basket handles.

The leaves are most widely used. Preferred varieties (P. tectorius var. laevis) is prized by weavers because the leaves are free of the prickles along the midrib and edges) are cured by soaking in the ocean and/or boiling or heating and drying, and reincarnated into hats, pillows, fans, mats, baskets, toys, other plaited products and, in old Hawaii, even canoe sails. Leaves are also traditionally utilized as roof and wall thatching, compost, cigarette wrappers, ornaments and balls for children's games.

In Hawaii, traditional medicines were derived mainly from the fruits, male flowers and aerial roots of hala. Administered solitarily, or in combination with other components, hala was used to treat complaints such as ea (thrush), paaoao (latent childhood disease), skin disorders, chest pains, respiratory and digestive ailments.

Unlike other Pacific cultures, Hawaii under-utilizes the culinary features of hala. I've eaten ono hala that tasted like a cross between passion fruit and papaya. The fibrous, dried fruit can be used as paint brushes in ornamenting kapa, for fuel, as compost and as fishing-line floats.

Hawaiian lei makers identify at least six color distinctions of hala's fruit segments: hala — common yellow to red; hala íkoi — lemon-colored base, with bright orange upper half; hala lihilihi ula — bright yellow base, with bright orange-red at the top; hala melemele — bright yellow; hala pia-petitie, canary yellow fruit; and hala ula — entire fruit segment red-orange.

Hínano (male hala flowers) perfumes kapa cloth,is draped in garlands and scents coconut oil.

The National Tropical Botanical Garden nurtures a congregation of hala cultivars at its Allerton and McBryde gardens on Kauai.

Hala's sheltering role in the beginning and ending chapters for St. Damien at Kalaupapa embodies its nurturing mana.