Waikīkī Aquarium
Chenopodium oahuense

ʻAweoweo ʻAweoweo.

An endemic shrub with grey-green leaves, named after a reef fish that turns the same red as its mature stems.

Endemic

ʻAweoweo is an endemic Hawaiian shrub found nowhere else on Earth, with soft grey-green leaves and small clustered flowers along reddish stems.

It was important in traditional Hawaiian medicine and ceremony, and the leaves were eaten as a cooked green in times of need.

It shares its name with a reef fish — the bigeye ʻaweoweo — because the plant's mature stems turn the same vivid red as the fish, a poetic naming pattern common in Hawaiian botany.