Tuesday kicked off Earth Month, and what better way to start the month than with a card game about Hawaiʻi's trees? Gov. Josh Green has also declared 2025 the year of our community forests.
The nonprofit Trees for Honolulu's Future focuses on bringing people and groups together to grow Hawaiʻi's urban forest. With the help of a grant from the Department of Land and Natural Resources' Kaulunani Urban & Community Forestry Program, the nonprofit was able to create a card game called Kumulāʻau.
Kumulāʻau, which translates to "tree" in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, aims to engage the community on the various trees across the state.
Dan Dinell from Trees for Honolulu's Future said the game takes about 10 minutes. Teachers are using them in classrooms, even expanding it to have students create a whole forest for trees.
He said the game is simple enough that anyone can play. First, you draw a tree card and see what resources you need to grow your tree. Each tree needs a different amount of sun, nutrients and soil to grow. After you figure out how much of each resource your tree needs, then you can draw a card from the resource deck.
However, be careful — you can also draw different diseases that can harm your tree. If you draw a disease card, you will end up needing extra resources to grow your tree. The winner is the one who collects all the resource cards they need to grow their tree first.
Dinell shared that the inspiration for Kumulāʻau came from a game called Tremendous that middle schoolers from ʻIolani School created during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We saw it and we loved it and so we started playing it, and we thought, 'Well, we could improve on it, we could make it a more Hawaiʻi-centric game.' And so that's what we did," he said.
The game costs $15 and can be bought at Bookends in Kailua, Da Shop in Kaimukī, Basically Books in Hilo, and the Foster Botanical Garden Gift Shop — and online. Learn more here.
This interview aired on The Conversation on April 1, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m.
