Bombax
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Bombax flower
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
|
Bombax buonopozense |
Bombax is a genus of three to eight species of trees, native to tropical and subtropical regions of the Indian Subcontinent, tropical Southeast Asia, northern Australia, and tropical Africa. Common names include silk cotton trees, semul, simul, simal, red cotton trees, or Indian kapok trees.
Bombax species are among the largest trees in their regions, reaching 30-40 m tall and up to 3 m trunk diameter. The leaves are dry-season deciduous, 30-50 cm across, palmate, with 5-9 leaflets. They bear red flowers between January and March, which mature into small husks containing a fibre, similar to kapok (Ceiba pentandra) and to cotton, though with shorter fibres than cotton, that does not lend itself to spinning, making it unusable as a textile product.
They are also planted domestically and for reforestation of cleared areas.
Bombax species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including the leaf-miner Bucculatrix crateracma which feeds exclusively on Bombax ceiba.
There is a beautiful Silk-Cotton Bombax specimen in the Lal Bagh gardens in Bangalore, India, quite probably the largest and oldest in the world. Tour guides for the Lal Bagh gardens claim that this is the oldest living tree in the world, a title that most experts agree belongs to a Bristlecone Pine in the White Mountains of California.
Los Angeles, California has many Silk-Cotton Bombax trees planted in parks and along streets and highways. The Huntington Gardens north of LA have many specimens both in the gardens, and also in the parking lot.
