Ceiba pentandra (L.) Gaertn.

Habit: Large tree

Trees, to 20 m high, buttressed at base; bark green or greenish-grey, peeling off in round bosses; exudation red, watery, sticky; branches horizontal in whorls. Leaves digitately compound, alternate, gathered towards the apex of branchlets; rachis 5-20 cm, slender, glabrous, swollen tip and base; leaflets 5-9; petiolule 3-8 mm, stout, glabrous; lamina 4.5-14.5 x 1.5-4 cm, elliptic, obovate-oblong or ovate-oblong, base acute or cuneate, apex acute or acuminate, margin entire, glabrous, chartaceous; lateral nerves 5-14 pairs, pinnate, prominent, intercostae reticulate, prominent. Flowers bisexual, creamy white, usually in clusters of 3-10, axillary or grouped towards the ends of leafless branchlets, rarely solitary, axillary; pedicels 2-4 cm long, stout, glabrous; calyx green, campanulate, ca. 1 cm long, irregularly 4-5 lobed, coriaceous, glabrous outside, silky pubescent inside, persistent; petals 5, 2.5-4 x 1-1.5 cm, creamy white, obovate-spathulate, adnate to the base of staminal tube, tomentose out side except at the base pubescent near the apex inside, imbricate; staminal tube divided into 5 phalanges, each dividing again into 2 filiform branches bearing 2-3 anafractose, 1-locular twisted anthers; ovary superior, globular or ovoid, yellow, sessile, tomentose at apex; 5-locular, ovules many in each locule, on axil placenta; style white, filiform at base, suddenly obliquely enlarged above the stamens; stigma capitate. Fruit a capsule 7.5-25 x 3-4 cm, ellipsoid to fusiform, green when young, become brown, narrowed at both ends, indehiscent or tardily dehiscing into 5 valves, septa membranous; seeds numerous, subpyriform, black with copious white silky fibres, testa brown to blackish.

Habit: A large deciduous tree, upto 20m.

Maharashtra: Kolhapur, Pune Karnataka: Coorg, Mysore, N. Kanara, Shimoga Kerala: All districts

Planted around the villages and roadsides. Common. Native of Africa, now widely planted in the tropics.