Tree of the week

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Good morning. ‘Tree of the week,’ authored as always by our tree-loving friend Pieter Severynen, is back after a brief hiatus. Enjoy.

The Floss Silk Tree – Chorisia speciosa

It should come as no surprise that the official Los Angeles city tree is not a native Californian. Southern Brazil and Argentina are the homeland of this 30 to 60’ tall, usually not quite as wide, eccentric.

Covered in very showy, lily like, orchid to pink flowers to 6” across in October, the normally evergreen tree at that time briefly loses all or most of its leaves, the leaflets of which are shaped like fingers on a hand. Its grass-green, weirdly swollen, heavy trunk and few, thick, sometimes wayward growing branches make the tree look as if someone hastily sketched it, but never quite finished the job. Vicious looking thorns cover the trunk. Fruit pods the size of big avocados appear in spring, may hang on for months before splitting open and revealing their cottony contents, sometimes used as a kapok substitute.

‘Los Angeles Beautiful’ is a grafted wine-red variety, ‘Majestic Beauty’ a grafted thornless one. Easy to maintain, very fast to grow when young, the tree loves full sun. Just keep it away from sidewalks and parked cars. It may need monthly summer wateringbut blooms better when kept dry from late summer on. The white floss silk tree, C. insignis, has white to pale yellow flowers.

Other members of the Bombacaea or cotton tree family are equally fascinating. The waterproof seed hairs from the fruit of the related South American kapok tree, Ceiba pentandra, were used as stuffing for pillows and life jackets, before synthetics took over. Thor Heyerdahl used the lighter than cork ‘balsa’ wood of the Peruvian Ochroma grandiflora tree to build his ‘Kon-Tiki’ raft on which he sailed from South America to the Tuamotu islands in the Pacific in order to prove his theories about migration. The African savanna baobab tree, Adansonia digitata, has a monstrously swollen, bottle shaped, often hollow trunk, on top of which rests a small crown, making the tree look like it was planted upside down.

Thanks Pieter
Email Pieter: plseve@earthlink.net
Photo Credit: PlantsofDisneyland.com