Kapok Tree

One of the giants of the tropical American forest, a deciduous tree with a massive trunk, large plank buttresses and sharp conical prickles on young stems. Clusters of white to pale yellow or pink flowers open on leafless branches, and the large capsules split to release seeds packed in silky white floss, the kapok once used to fill mattresses and life jackets. When a large ceiba falls it opens a gap in the forest that looks, in the words of Smithsonian researchers, as if a bomb had gone off.