Fauna and Flora
Moana Voyages makes you discover this week an exceptional flower by its shape and the place where it grows … Let’s discover this endemic flower of Raiatea island.
The Tiare Apetahi is a lobiace flower of the Campanulaceae family, with its original shape with half-corolla with five petals, it looks like no other flower, it is unique in the world. This endemic flower of Raiatea Island, in the Leeward Islands archipelago, only grows in a specific place on the island, the Temehani Mount. All the attempts to transplant in other parts of the island or in the Leeward Island archipelago have failed.
Purple Tiare Apetahi Like many rare plants and animal species, the Tiare Apetahi is unfortunately endangered, victim of poaching and vandalism. The number of plants has been declining dangerously for twenty years. Ranked as protected species since 1996, picking and possession is punished with a big fine up to a prison sentence.
According to the legend, the Tiare Apetahi was born of a fatal incident …
After having a bad argument with its unfaithful husband, a fisherman’s wife committed suicide on the summit of Temehani Mount. Beforehand, she amputated her hand that she put in a hole, hand to the sky. The next day, at dawn, walkers who spent the night at the summit of the mount are awakened by small pops … Looking around them, they discovered a fantastic spectacle: white flowers in the form of open arm blooming all over the Plateau, covering it of a white magical heady scent… They named the flower “Tiare Apetahi ” which means “only one side”.
Forewarned, the husband went there, dug a flower plan and tried to transplant it in his garden in memory of his wife. He began a thousand times, but the flower did not agree to bloom elsewhere than on the Plateau…
