Floss silk tree, Chorisia speciosa
Images copyright by Mark A. Chappell
The floss-silk tree Chorisia speciosa is native to southern Brazil and Argentina, but because of its spectacular flowers and intriguing spiked trunk it is a popular ornamental plant in southern California (where I took these pictures). A mature, healthy tree usually puts out hundreds of big flowers at once; they litter the ground with pink when they fall after a few days. After flowering, the trees produce huge green sausage-like seed pods that eventually releas clouds of white fluff (hence the common name of floss-silk tree) Since these flowers were quite high, I used a very long (500-1000 mm) lens for these images.
