Hawaii introduced banana poka in the early 1900s for its edible fruit and ornamental flowers: Birds scattered their seeds, and it eventually climbed into rainforests, where it now smothers trees beneath dense curtains of vegetation

Banana poka was introduced to Hawaiʻi in the 1920s as an ornamental, not in the late 19th century. Birds later dispersed their seeds into native rainforests, where the fast-growing plant now climbs over trees and blankets them with dense vegetation.

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