Plumeria lei on Oʻahu

Plumeria, called melia in Hawaiian, is not native to Hawaiʻi but has been here long enough to be the flower most visitors picture when they picture a lei. The blooms are five broad petals, white and yellow most commonly, and pink through to deep red on other trees. A lei is strung from whole flowers, so it is full and light and sits well over the shoulders.

It is the least expensive of the common flower lei, which is why it does so much of the work at airport arrivals and casual occasions. The trade-off is life span. Plumeria bruises where it is handled and browns at the edges within a day, faster in a hot car. Buy it for the day you need it, keep it cool and in a bag until the moment you use it, and do not plan on a plumeria lei surviving to be worn again the next morning.

The trees drop their leaves and stop flowering in the cool months, so plumeria is genuinely seasonal on Oʻahu: broadly available from spring into autumn, scarce and more expensive in winter, when shops lean on orchid and carnation instead. Scent varies a lot between trees, from barely there to strong and citrus-sweet, and shops rarely sort by it, so smell the strand before you choose if that matters to you.