What in the heck is this?
Four things caught my attention about this tree...
It has big tropical-looking flowers. It has big wads of fluffy cotton stuff in it with seeds.
It's Autumn and it's loaded with all these flowers.
It has pointy things. I would not want to land in it while skydiving naked.
The fluffy stuff is reeeally soft and silky. I wasn't there to see where the fluffy stuff came from. But I'm guessing that the green pods are packed tight with this stuff and burst out like popcorn. The wind easily carries a 3" ball with its packet of seeds.
I tossed my camera up into the tree to knock some of these wads out (yes I did, several times, though in its soft protective case) and collected about 30 seeds to try to germinate. (Here, hand me your camera.)
Anyway, if you know the name of this tree, tell me! This is just so bizarre. I've never seen one before. It's beautiful.
Comments
Scott and I have a thought; he thought "tropical", and it reminded me of things we'd seen, fruit wise, in Sanya, Hainan, China. I wonder if a seed fell into someone's luggage, or fruit was brought across, and a seed fell to the ground...
Cotton on a Tree
.. John, the question is more interesting than the tree.
But if you must know..
.. the practically applicable result of having curiosity dominate all the rest of my distracting and desperatly scribbled notes on what absolutely must be done next on the list so that the constantly buggy forces that continue to evolve as apparent priorities can be considered ever so remotely possible to get done in the time that has been allowed for them to be postponed just one more time without feeling the disturbingly questionable need to go to confession even tho I'm not Catholic and thinking that if I actually did the priest would be sitting behind that screeny-thing thinking to himself, "..What the heck is this?".
Chorisia speciosa..
a member of the Bombacaceae,
or cotton-tree family.
details:
http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/MEMBGNewsletter/Volume2number1/Bombacaceae.html