SILK FLOSS TREE (Chorisia speciosa) 3 seeds
Chorisia speciosa, (syn, Ceiba speciosa), known as the Silk Floss Tree, is a lovely flowering tree that is native to Argentina and Brazil.The tree grows 9-18 metres tall with pale green leaves palmately divided into 5-7 pointed leaflets. The young trees start out growing fast, straight, and narrow, then slowly develop broadly spreading umbrella canopies as they age. The bulbous green trunk is covered with big blunt warty triangular spines and turns grey as the tree gets older. The trunk is bottle-shaped, generally bulging in its lower third, measuring up to 2 metres in girth.Silk floss trees typically drop their leaves just before they put on their spectacular autumn display of five-petaled flowers. The petals vary from pale pink to rose to purple or burgundy at the tips and grade into ivory with brownish spots or blotches at the base. The flowers are followed by pear shaped capsules filled with many seeds embedded in silky white floss. The cotton inside the fruit pods, although not of as good quality as that of the kapok tree, has been used as stuffing for pillows and thermic insulation at times.