In March 2022 we were able to visit relatives in Tampa Bay, Florida. One day we visited a lovely open-air marketplace in nearby St. Petersburg. Walking back to the car, we passed a lovely, massive tree with sturdy branches that came off the main trunk close to the ground. My 10-year-old granddaughter said that it looked like it would be a good climbing tree. It did indeed. The tree also had amazing red, almost fleshy, appearing flowers near the tips of some of the smaller branches. There was not a leaf in sight, though.
And then came the question, “Do you know what that is?” When friends or relatives know you are a Master Gardener, they assume you know about every plant, bug, disease, etc. So even off the clock, you rapidly get used to giving the standard response. “I haven't a clue, but I will research that for you.”
When I got back to the hotel, I wondered what to do. I did not have any of my normal resources available to me. I had taken a few pictures of the flowers, so I uploaded one into a free plant ID app that I had previously downloaded to my phone. Now I am not going to mention which app I used as I have had very mixed results with it. It told me one plant was a houseplant. Ummm, could you be more specific? It identified another as a terra cotta pot. I have also been in the situation where several Master Gardeners tried to identify the same plant each using a different app and we each got a different answer. So, I take any result with a grain of salt.
But this time the name popped right up, Bombax ceiba, Red Silk Cotton Tree. I put that name into Google to see if the pictures matched the ones I had taken. I thought they did. But there are some look-alike plants. Before I started broadcasting this identification, I had better make sure this tree grew in Florida.
I posed that question to the search engine. It gave me numerous sites that included the tree name and Florida. But one particularly caught my eye, www.monumentaltrees.com. I saw that it mentioned St Petersburg. When I clicked on the link, I found several pictures of the same tree that we had walked past with an identical address. I certainly had a definitive identification. I just wish all my searches were that successful. (Note a few of the pictures did show people climbing and sitting in the tree, and they were adults).
When I got home, I found out a bit more information from the North Carolina Extension Gardener Toolbox. Bombax ceiba grows throughout Southeast Asia and Australia, frequently in tropical areas that have monsoonal rains. It requires sun, loamy soil with good drainage, and does well in USDA climate zones 10a&b, 11a&b, and 12a&b. It can grow 60 to 75 feet tall and 40 to 60 feet wide. It loses its leaves in late winter-early spring, just before flowering starts. Once it has flowered, leaves reappear. After the flower petals fall to the ground, a capsule-type fruit forms which are filled with silky cottony material that envelops the seeds. When the capsule splits open, this material falls to the ground and is spread with the winds. If you would like more information on this plant, I have included the website. https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/bombax-ceiba/.