Paoakalani Ave. (2024)

In the ahupuaʻa of Waikīkī, which lies in the moku of Kona here on Oʻahu, stands a street named after a home for a queen.

We are speaking of Paoakalani Ave.

Translated as “the royal perfume,” Paoakalani is the name given to a personal home of Queen Liliʻuokalani in Waikīkī.

Located in an area traditionally named Hamohamo, which refers to the sand rubbing within your thighs, Paoakalani has been replaced today with an apartment complex named Liliʻuokalani Gardens fronting the Ala Wai Canal.

Paoakalani included a favorite garden of the queen where she would love to tend to and take care of.

This garden would later become one of significance when Queen Liliʻuokalani was placed on house arrest within her own palace for eight months.

For a period of that time, Queen Liliʻuokalani would receive bouquets of flowers from another one of her gardens, here at Uluhaimalama.

Wrapped in the current newspaper of the time, the queen was able to stay informed with the news outside of her guarded walls.

But on March 20, 1895, the Queen recognized a special flower inserted within her normal bouquet that she knew came from Paoakalani.

Because of this special surprise, Her Royal Highness had composed a song for the one who had delivered the bouquet.

While stories share that it was a little boy named Johnny Wilson, who would later become

Mayor of Honolulu three times, calculations prove that Wilson would have actually been approximately 24 years old and living away while attending college.

Named “Kuʻu Pua I Paoakalani,” Queen Liliʻuokalani asks the listener to guess the flower she describes and answer in the form of a riddle.

Did you know? Now you do!