Ceiba Species, Floss Silk Tree

My mother kept a young, potted C. speciosa on her patio (in Northeast TX) for years, & brought it indoors every winter... when it finally...Read More grew too large to haul, she gave it to me. I planted it in Houston (midtown), & now it's huge & blooms in September every year. Butterflies & Hummingbirds use it.
It froze to the ground during our rough winter (low 20's) a few years ago, but grew vigourously back into a joined clump of 4 or 5 trunks. C. speciosa tolerates only a brief, mild frost... a hard freeze would kill it.
It is surprisingly fast-growing in full sun, heat, & humidity here. The leaves get singed & ratty-looking if droughty.

I bought this as Chorisia speciosa. It was in a #10 can and the whole thing fit inside the car. Now it is well over 30' tall. Mine has ne...Read Morever bloomed (16 years!) but it is in a dry garden w/ no summer water. It froze back to the trunk the first winter, but re-sprouted. The growth after the freeze has noticeably fewer thorns.

Don't plant too close to a building, this is the tree that had to be removed from next to Mission San Luis Obispo. It was damaging the foundation, but there was a big stink about the removal of a "heritage tree." Actually it was only 50 years old!

I started mine from seed in 2008. Found it to be quite tough here in zone 9 through drought, freezes, multiple transplants, and even a hu...Read Morerricane! No blooms yet, but this fall it will be 5 years old & has gotten pretty big so I'm hopefull.
You can read about its progress from germination till now in my journal -
http://davesgarden.com/tools/journal/viewentry.php?rid=20808...

I absolutely love this tree and have been trying to germinate its seeds without any success. The first time I tried, i basically just put...Read More them in soil. Needless to say nothing happened.
This year I thought I was being clever by pre soaking them in water on a heat pad. Checked today and they have jelly like substance oozing out. What should I do? Please could somebody give me some advise.

I have a ten year old seedling that has not yet bloomed. Is there hope?

Bought this tree from Edison/Ford Estate in Ft. Myers, Fl. It was in a pot and was about three feet tall. Grows very fast here in East Fo...Read Morert Myers - close to Labelle. Is roughly 12 feet tall now.Has bloomed this, its second year since planting. Going to try and propagate from seed. Spectacular tree!

The silk floss does very well in Ojai-Sunset Magazine Zone 23

Please disregard my last posting. I just found out the thorny trees I saw were Honey Locust.

I've had limited sucess so far. The 20 degree farenheit mininmum temperature here does serious damage to young trees, but I think as the...Read More mass increases. it will be more cold tolerant.

i have two of these trees and love both of them they both seem to be fast growing, i thought it would keep the squirrels from the bird fe...Read Moreeder didnt work. i just got seeds so as to try to grow more i love them.
debi

I have a variegated form of this plant I grew from a seed four years ago. Variegation is very variable thru the leaves. This tree has not...Read More bloomed yet, so I don't know if flower color is affected. Fertilization causes the plant to revert to all green in new leaves. When the excess nitrogen is used up, new foliage again comes in variegated. I am currently trying to propagate with stem cuttings. If they root, I will have limited numbers for sale.

I have had this tree for at least 5 yrs here in S. Louisiana and it has grown slowly, and never bloomed, so I really don't think its a go...Read Moreod choice for our area. I recieved it as a novelity trade thru DG. It freezes back each yr but does come back in the spring and gains a little more height each yr.

There are at least five (4 pink, one white) blooming here in Fort Pierce, FL this year. They're beautiful!

One of the nice thing about this tree is that it blooms at this time of year [November] when few other large conspicuous plants do.

Man I love this plant!!! I bought one in a five gallon last year for 8 bucks, it was very nice.. Well I took it to my parents house, and ...Read Morethere it gets really cold in the winter, about 22 degrees... Well all the limbs froze back to the trunk.. I thought I was dead for sure.. Well when spring came, it had new shoots.. Since I live in a place where it doesn't get 22 in the winter, I took it back to my house, I get about 32 in the winter.. And its been growing fast since it was branch less. It has formed a nice round head, and I hope it blooms for me this spring.. I am always fertilizing it with Miracle Gro Bloom Booster.. When the first set of leaves came out they were kinda yellow, but since ive fertilized with the bloom booster, they are now nice and dark green.. I really recommend fertilizing your tree with bloom booster, it seems to speed the tree up a little and make its leaves a nice dark green.. We will see if the fertilizer will help the blooms be bigger and more profound!!! I will update when it has bloomed! I love love love this tree...

26 Weeks later. The seedlings I planted of this tree are growing rather fast. I'll upload the photos of the seedlings and the trees arou...Read Morend our area especially now, they are flowering.
I may plant them in two weeks time when the rains start.

I planted a small seed grown tree next to the house and had to move it. In doing so it broke with only a very small bit of root. The tr...Read Moreee was about 12 ft tall. I planted and kept watered a few days then forgot it and really expected it to die, but it never even wilted. It is 4 years old and had its first bloom only a month ago. Seed came from a pink parent, but the bloom was a pale yellow with a deep pink blush in the center that faded out into the bloom. Very pretty. This tree is also a thornless variety like the parent.

Tree is catching on in Northern California, We have a few specimens on Roadside Arboretum in the Fremont, Ca. area. Don't plant to close ...Read Moreto concrete walks, Trees will completely heal over from lawn mower wounds. Some of these trees will have different growth forms. They do grow fast from seed and treat trees with fungicide if bark becomes infected with some kind of fungus. Trees regenerate a new crown if vandalized in parks. keep a nice well around tree to avoid mower damage. Most people will seek this tree when seen in flower. There is a white flowering form available.

This is a great tree for Southern Calfornia- easy to germinate, and you can get a good sized tree in just 3 years from seed (one that is ...Read Moretaller than your head, at least). Then, in just 3 more years, it will be a monster. It looks particularly tropical in having a green trunk, sometimes completely covered with barnacle-like spines, and other times, no spines at all. The gorgeous, huge, pink flowers drop by the pound daily and are really annoying to park under (creates a difficult to clean off greasy substance on the glass of your windshield). Local feral populations of parrots dine on the fruits, that look a lot like giant avocados, in the winter and spring. Then they explode, sending all this cottony fibre into the air and drop 1X2cm brown seeds that are very easy to get another tree from. Lately I have seen more and more of these trees being planted by the city along highways and in medians of Los Angeles.

Had one I chopped down a few years back and just left one of the branches on the ground since it was particularly nice and spiny, about 2' long. Was going to use it as some thing to plant other plants around, when it shot up a whole bunch of new branches. It had rooted into the ground. So this is a plant that can 'easily' if not too easily rooted from hardwood cuttings.