Silk Floss Trees

The Silk Floss Trees are the native to South America. They belong to the same family as Baobab and Kapok trees. Like so many other species of trees and plants, due to ease of navigation, have been brought to another countries and have adapted to themselves to the local climate. Many explorers brought species found in the newly discovered lands to their country as a mark of the success of the voyage and also out of human curiosity to try and propagate the species in their own country.

Due to the change in climate many traits undergo some differences from the original variety. Some traits that may be affected are height, volume, color of flowers and fruits and yield. Plants show a remarkable ability to adapt and propagate in alien environs. Thus tomatoes and potatoes are not the natives to India but grow in copious quantities in India. Similarly, when the Portuguese arrived and inhabited Goa and its neighborhood, they introduced the Pineapple to India. They called it Ananas a name which is still used by natives to describe the fruit.  Although it is another matter that Portuguese being the most adventurous explorers brought the fruit from Peru where it is called nanas.

Anyway, coming to the point, I was attracted to the pink flowers in copious numbers on the trees in Dehradun. There are five to six trees in the compound of ONGC hospital. These days they are in full bloom. Flowers are pinkish white in the center and pink in the outer parts of the sepals. A lot of birds visit these trees and flowers continuously fall to the ground. These trees are doing very well here as is evident from the size and girth covered with big thorns. These thorns are reservoirs in which water is stored for the dry season. Some of these trees has green covering on their trunks indicating the abundance of chlorophyll which is used to synthesize the food when the leaves dry and trees become shorn of them.

Here are some of pictures of the trees I took with my HTC HD desire camera.