Silk Floss Tree
Ceiba speciosa · Malvaceae · 비단솜나무
How to spot it
Easily recognized by green trunks covered with triangular thorns and pink flowers filling the leafless branches at flowering time.
Look
- Leaves
- Light green leaves are palmately divided into 5-7 lance-shaped leaflets (12 cm long, toothed margins), and usually drop before flowering begins.
- Flowers
- Showy pink five-petaled funnel-shaped flowers with a yellowish-white throat, 10-15 cm long.
- Fruit
- Pear-shaped to oblong splitting pods (about 20 cm) hold white cotton-like fiber and black seeds.
- Bark
- The trunk and branches are covered with thick triangular thorns; the bark is green when young and turns gray when mature.
Where it grows
- Native to
- Native to tropical America (Brazil and Argentina).
- Ecology
- A tree that attracts butterflies, pollinated by animals.