Description:
Tall trees, with horizontally branched crown and a very straight trunk; bark pale grey, smooth, usually with scattered conical spines. Leaves digitately 5-9(usually 7 or very rarely more than 9)-foliolate; lamina of leaflets entire, articulated to a +/- suborbicular disc at apex of a long, glabrous petiole. Flowers moderately large, axillary or subterminal, solitary in axils or often 1-3-fasciculate. Calyx cupular, 5-lobed. Petals 5, imbricate, rose-coloured or white. Stamens (10)15, united in 5 phalanges, each bearing 2 or 3 coiled anther-thecae and united below in a tube. Ovary 5-locular, each locule with many ovules; stigma club-shaped, pentagonal. Capsule a woody or coriaceous 5-valved capsule. Seeds many, surrounded by endocarp wool; endosperm thin or absent; cotyledons much contorted.
Distribution:
Species 10: 9 confined to tropical and subtropical America; Ceiba pentandra (L.) Gaertn., the Silk Cotton or Kapok Tree, is native in tropical America and probably in trop. Africa. Most specimens in sthn trop. Afr. are cultivated but the species has been recorded as spontaneous at times in various parts of trop. Africa, including Angola, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique.
Source:
SSTA
Classification:
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