You don’t come to Hawaii and not at least have a flower or a lei,” said Kuhio Lewis, CEO of the Hawaiian Council.

Hawaii lawmakers are advocating for increased support for locally grown lei, as the majority of the flowers used are imported from Thailand, raising cultural and economic concerns.

Meleana Estes gathered stories from her grandmother and others on the art of making the islands’ traditional garlands. By Victoria Gomelsky In the 1990s when Meleana Estes was a teenager attending ...

Some Hawaii lawmakers think the state should do more to help producers of lei made with locally grown, fragrant flowers, rather than imported purple orchids, but some lei sellers worry that proposed ...