Red silk cotton

Bombax costatum, the red-flowered silk-cotton tree or kapokier rouge, is a medium-sized deciduous tree of the Malvaceae (formerly Bombacaceae) native to the Sudano-Guinean savanna woodlands of West and Central Africa, ranging from Senegal and Mali eastward to Sudan and southward into the Central African Republic. Trees typically reach 10-20 m tall, with a straight cylindrical bole bearing scattered stout conical prickles when young that are gradually shed with age, and a spreading, somewhat flat-topped crown. The bark is greyish and lightly fissured. The leaves are alternate, palmately compound, with five to seven elliptic-lanceolate leaflets 8-18 cm long, and are shed during the long dry season. While the tree is leafless, large, showy, fleshy flowers appear directly on the bare branches: each flower has five thick, recurved, brick-red to orange-red petals 6-9 cm long, numerous stamens fused at the base into a column, and a stout style. The fruit is an oblong woody capsule 8-15 cm long that dehisces into five valves to release small seeds embedded in masses of soft yellowish-white silky kapok fibres dispersed by wind.