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Though Pu’u Kukui, the highest peak in the West Maui Mountains, remains one of the rainiest locations on the planet, the once-flourishing mid-elevation hillsides are droughted and eroding.

Now, as Maui recovers from the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, one that left at least 98 people dead, a band of arborists, farmers and landscapers has set about trying to save Lahaina’s ulu, kukui nut and other culturally important trees, in some cases digging down to the roots of badly burned specimens to find live tissue that could be used to propagate new shoots.

Kukui nut oil was used for torches — kukui is known as the “tree of light.”

By contrast, researchers believe breadfruit and kukui nut — now the state tree of Hawaii — were among the many edible plants Polynesian voyagers brought around 1,000 years ago.

By the afternoon, they evacuated to a shopping center nearby, where they could see the fires spreading clearly down Puʻu Kukui, the mountain east of Lahaina.