Kīlo Lāʻau is an engaging educational guide from Three Mountain Alliance’s ʻImi Pono program, designed to help learners build their plant-identification skills. It introduces tools such as mobile apps, field guides, and observational techniques, emphasizing the practice of “kīlo lāʻau”—careful observation of plants—in local contexts like gardens, trails, and neighborhoods.
Get Started Questions: Students reflect on why plant identification matters and what features they notice in plants.
App Exploration: Download apps like Seek by iNaturalist, PlantNet, or Google Lens and test them in the field.
Scavenger Hunt: Use the provided scavenger worksheet to find plants across categories like endemic, indigenous, Polynesian-introduced, and invasive.
Research & Share: For a chosen plant, students complete a mini-report using the “E Aʻo Mai, E Aʻo Aku” worksheet (with photos, names, uses, and habitats), then teach someone else about it.
Plant identification methods: morphology, names (common/scientific), uses
Digital literacy: using identification apps and databases
Biodiversity categories: endemic, indigenous, introduced, invasive
Observation and data collection: journaling, sketching, classification
Cultural connections: understanding plant names and traditional importance
