The white silk cotton tree in my area

Hello, I hope you are all fine. This post is about a tree in my locality.

This tree is known by many because it is native to Africa and was transported to Asia where they cultivate it for it fiber. A lot of you know it as the kapok tree.

This tree has a huge trunk and also grows branches horizontally at the top. The start flowering after they have shed their leaves in order to make their fertilization by bats very easy.

They flower every year but not all of them. Some of them don’t have regular flowering and some can go more than two years without flowering.

When the flower develops, it turns to fruits which contains silk-like material which is where it got it name from. The silk like material also contains the seeds which when dispersed, increases the chance of the trees growing else where

In some parts of the world, the seeds are pressed to obtain oil. In my locality, the silk is used to make pillows. Trust me, the pillows are very comfy. These pillows were popular in the past until the invention of synthetic polyester for making pillows.

But in my locality, they still believe in doing it natural so they continue to use it as pillows to sell. Meaning, it is a source of employment for them.

This tree is very helpful and if you want to know how natural pillow feels like, trying using the silk from this tree.

I hope you enjoyed my post and you learnt something today. Watch out for my next post