Kapok Tree, Silk Cotton Tree
Ceiba pentandra · Malvaceae · 케이폭솜나무
How to spot it
Told apart by prickly young trunks, large buttress roots, and white cottony fibers around the seeds.
Look
- Leaves
- Palmately compound leaves with 5 to 9 (to 15) leaflets; the leaflets are obovate to elliptic, (3.5 to) 5 to 21 cm long.
- Flowers
- White, cream-yellow to pink flowers with 5 petals and 5 stamens.
- Fruit
- Seeds are held inside oval to egg-oblong capsules, wrapped in creamy white cottony fibers (kapok).
- Bark
- The trunk of a young tree is covered with sharp conical spines, which gradually disappear as the tree grows.
Where it grows
- Native to
- Native to tropical America.