Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The Hawaiian huckleberry, Vaccinium reticulatum, a low shrub found in the high mountains of several islands of the group, covering large open tracts in some places. The shining fleshy berry, though astringent, is not unpleasant to the taste, and makes a good preserve. It is the principal food of the mountain wild goose. It was formerly used as a propitiatory offering to the fire-goddess Pele, and. is still celebrated in the songs of the natives.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A small red or yellow
berry growing on the shrub (Vaccinium reticulatum) of volcanic parts of the Hawaiian islands of Hawaii and Maui, or the shrub itself.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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We left early, and descended the terminal wall, still as before, green with ferns, ohias, and sandalwood, and bright with clusters of turquoise berries, and the red fruit and waxy blossoms of the ohelo.
The Hawaiian Archipelago Isabella Lucy 2004
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Then, as now, ohelo berries grew profusely round the terminal wall of Kilauea, and there, as elsewhere, were sacred to Pele, no one daring to eat of them till he had first offered some of them to the divinity.
The Hawaiian Archipelago Isabella Lucy 2004
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In southern Hawaii Pele was feared more than any other deity, and no one dared to approach her abode without making her an offering of the ohelo-berries that grow in the neighborhood.
Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror Trumbull White 1904
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And now he runs on over the lands of Paomai, through the wooded dells of the gorge of Kaiholena, and onward across Kaunolu and Kalulu, until he reaches the head spring of sacred Kealia called Waiakekua; and here he gathered bananas and ohelo berries; and as he stayed his hunger with the pleasant wild fruit, he beheld a white-haired priest of Kaunolu, bearing a calabash of water.
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The ohelo berries of the mountains will refresh my love.
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Kanakas try to keep on the good side of this torrid divinity by secret gifts, either of white chickens or of red ohelo berries, and an old man once put into a guide's hand the bones of a child that he might throw them down the inner crater, -- Halemaumau, the House of Eternal Burning, whose ruddy lava cones are homes of the goddess and her family.
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We passed a pleasant forenoon strolling along the tree-fringed brink, looking down eight or nine hundred feet upon its black lava floor, and plucking ohelo berries, which grew there abundantly, a kind of large, red huckleberry that one could eat out of hand, but that one could not get excited over.
Time and Change John Burroughs 1879
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It is safe to say that very few kumu-hulas have seen and many have not even heard of the hula ohelo.
Unwritten Literature of Hawaii The Sacred Songs of the Hula Nathaniel Bright Emerson 1877
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KU OE KO'U WAHI _ohelo nei la, auwe, auwe! mele_ for the
Unwritten Literature of Hawaii The Sacred Songs of the Hula Nathaniel Bright Emerson 1877
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During our absence, the native men had gathered a quantity of ohelo berries, resembling cranberries, but tasting like blueberries, not so sweet perhaps, but like them seedless; they were very nice with sugar, so we added them to our bill of fare.
hernesheir commented on the word ohelo
A berry in the blueberry family, from Hawaii.
December 9, 2010