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Ceiba pentandra
Also called Kapoktree, Silk Cotton Tree, Kapok Tree, White Silk Cottontree, Silk Cottontree, White Silk Cotton Tree, Silkcottontree
In Singapore: Kapok Tree, Silk Cotton Tree, White Silk Cotton Tree, Kabu-Kabu, Kapok, Kekabu, 爪哇木棉 (Naturalised in Singapore)
9 NParks heritage trees in Singapore: Found in Seah Im Road, at far end of public carpark; Found in; Found in; Found in Singapore Botanic Gardens, beside Holttum Hall; Found in Fort Canning Park; Found in Braddell Road, at Toa Payoh North Flyover Traffic Island; Found in Jalan Kilang Barat, near Block 1001 Bukit Merah Lane 3 (Railway Corridor); Found in Upper Seletar Reservoir Park, near golf course; Found in Upper Seletar Reservoir Park, behind toilet blocks (near Rocket Tower)
Kapok is a very large tropical tree grown for its cotton-like seed fibre (kapok fluff) and, in its native range, for timber and shade. It needs a warm, frost-free climate; it is not usually grown as a houseplant.
Ceiba pentandra is a tropical tree of the order Malvales and the family Malvaceae (previously placed in the family Bombacaceae), native to Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and the northern half of South America; some authors also consider it native in western and central Africa. It is widely introduced in other tropical regions including South and Southeast Asia, where it is cultivated.
The tree and the cotton-like fluff obtained from its seed pods are commonly known in English as kapok, a Malay-derived name which originally applied to the related species Bombax ceiba, a native of tropical Asia. In Spanish-speaking countries the tree is commonly known as "ceiba" and in French-speaking countries as fromager. The tree is cultivated for its cottonlike seed fibre, particularly in south-east Asia, and is also known as the Java cotton, Java kapok, silk-cotton or samauma.
Ceiba pentandra originated in the American tropics. Although it is generally thought to have been introduced to Africa by humans, there is no historical evidence of this, and there is strong ecological, botanical and cytological evidence that the tree is native to western and central Africa. The dispersal mechanism by which the tree may have crossed the Atlantic Ocean is uncertain, but the fruits float, and could have been transported by ocean currents. Domesticated in West Africa, Ceiba pentandra is possibly native from Cape Verde eastwards to Chad and southwards to Angola. It has been introduced from there to East Africa and Asia.
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Ceiba pentandra by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
