Līloa Makinney Dunn is the Grounds & Collection Manager at the Harold L. Lyon Arboretum. Līloa was born and raised in the ahupuaʻa of Niu Valley, on the island of Oʻahu in the moku of Kona. He spent a great deal of his childhood on the islands of Hawaiʻi and Kauaʻi and in his early teens on the island of Huahine in French Polynesia. His interest in our natural environment began at a very young age and was solidified by two trips to the Big Island for a youth survival school called Wilderness Hawaiʻi. It was during these formidable years that he started to realize the beauty and the fragility of our native ecosystems and the uniqueness of our Hawaiian culture.

After High School,  Līloa attended school in Oregon before returning to Oʻahu to pursue a BA in Hawaiian Studies with an emphasis in natural environment at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He entered graduate school in the Ethnobotany program where he received a Master’s in Botanical Sciences.

His aloha for our culture and natural environment has guided him to dedicate his life to help preserve these things that are important to him.  His academic interest includes Hawaiian and Polynesian Ethnobotany with a strong emphasis on Polynesian crop varieties, agricultural systems, and traditional ecological knowledge.  He is equally, interested in Hawaiian and Polynesian native flora and island biogeography and conservation.  In his free time, he loves to surf, paddle and share with his keiki those things he holds special.  Aloha ‘Ᾱina!

Līloa

Jesse Adams is a Research Associate at the Harold L. Lyon Arboretum. His passions include reconstructing plant evolution and biogeography, and the conservation of the native flora. Jesse works daily to remove invasive species and curate the 9427 unique accessions in the arboretum’s Living Collection. He is currently pursing a Masters degree in Botany, and has a background in Archaeology and Zoology.