What's Flowering in the Botanic Gardens in August

The Silk Cotton Tree, or Red Kapok Tree.

Red Kapok or Silk Cotton Tree - Bombax ceiba

Bombax ceiba.

This beautiful tree flowers from  August,  September, and can reach to 60m high. We have specimens in the gardens and a large tree as you come into Cooktown near the corner of Racecourse Road and Hope Street, also down at Quarantine Bay and many other places.  Its trunk bears conical spikes when young to deter attacks by animals.

The tree has palmate-shaped leaves and is deciduous (loses its leaves) in winter, then the stunning large waxy red flowers are produced in the dry season when the tree is completely leafless and when most other forms of vegetation in the community are looking rather drab and forlorn. Although each flower only lasts for one day they are visited by numerous birds seeking the nectar. Birds have been observed to get drunk on the fermenting nectar! Often planted in large gardens and parks for these large red flowers.

The capsules that will follow these magnificent red flowers, ripen and split to reveal kapok and could be used to be used to stuff mattresses and pillows. This species yield an inferior grade of kapok that is sometimes used in India.  The smaller Yellow-flowering Kapok, Cochlospermum gillivrae, that is also flowering in some parts of town, also has kapok. The capsules of the red-flowering Kapok are about 10 cm long, densely packed with large quantities of cream fibrous material which resembles cotton wool and surrounds the seed, but is not really attached to the seed.

Widespread in WA, NT, Cape York and Nth Qld. Altitudinal range from sea level to about 300 m. Usually grows in monsoon forest and drier rain forest. Also occurs in Malesia, Asia and the Indian sub-continent.

It is a food plant for the larval stages of the Common Aeroplane Butterfly.

The inner bark may be used to make twine, the young leaves and fresh flowers as curry vegetables, the tap-root of young plants roasted and eaten. The flowers were used in Chinese herb teas.

A native of our town, Bombax grows well in Cooktown’s depleted soils and is hardy, a great feature tree for a large garden.