Schott's Ceiba, CEIBA SCHOTTII

from the January 15, 2012 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO
A SMALLER, SPINIER CEIBA
In the American tropics no forest tree is better known and recognized than the Ceiba, Ceiba pentandra, which grows to be a giant tree. Some books claim that the Maya regard them as sacred, though no Maya I've asked has ever confirmed that. Our Ceiba page is at http://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/ceiba.htm.

In Mexico we have four species of Ceibas of which three occur in the Yucatan. There's the famous C. pentandra, plus C. aesculifolia and C.schottii. C. aesculifolia is limited to the western side of the peninsula, probably appearing in the Mérida area. Here at Chichén Itzá I think we have only two species, the big C. pentandra and, for lack of a better name, what I call Schott's Ceiba, CEIBA SCHOTTII. I've seen the name Vanilla Silk Cotton Tree used for the species but I'm not sure anyone really recognizes that. Schott's Ceiba is endemic to the Yucatán Peninsula and northern Guatemala.

Nowadays Schott's Ceiba is fruiting, as shown below:

Schott's Ceiba, CEIBA SCHOTTII, fruit and leaves

In that picture the four-inch-long (10cm), nipple-bottomed fruit suspends from the tip of a limb from which nearly all the leaves have fallen in advance the dryer part of the dry season. Enough leaves remain on other limbs, though, to see that like the giant Ceiba the Schott's Ceiba's leaves are "digitately compound," its three to seven leaflets arising from the petiole's top like fingers from a hand.

Beneath the tree lay a fruit half-eaten by a rodent, apparently, overflowing with white fuzz, as shown below:

Schott's Ceiba, CEIBA SCHOTTII, fruit open to show kapok fibers

Here you see that Schott's Ceiba, just like the giant Ceiba, embeds its small seeds in abundant kapok fiber. Giant Ceiba kapok I've seen is brown-tinged, however, while Schott's fuzz is pure white. Also the giant's fruits are round bottomed while the Schott fruits I've seen are broadly nippled at their bases.

Schott's Ceiba's trunks are even spinier than the giant's, as shown on a 10-inch wide (25cm) trunk at the top of this page.

Schott's spines sometimes have multiple teeth, show clear layering, and bark between spines is gray -- as opposed to the giant's single teeth with no layering, and often with green bark between spines.

Though Schott's Ceiba grows much smaller than the giant, only to about 26 ft (8m), Schott's bears much larger flowers. Giant Ceiba flower petals are only about two inches long (5cm) while Schott's grow to about seven inches (18cm).

What a treat to meet this interesting local variation on the famous giant Ceiba theme. Also it's good, and unusual, to have found for free on the Internet a comprehensive technical paper in PDF format reviewing all 17 recognized Ceiba species, even including distribution maps for 16 of the species and several drawings. The paper is entitled "A Taxonomic Revision of the Genus Ceiba Mill. (Bombacaceae)." It's available here.

from the March 18, 2012 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO
SCHOTT'S CEIBA HEAVY WITH FRUITS
Last Sunday in an abandoned lot in Pisté a cluster of Schott's Ceibas turned up, enabling me to get a better idea of what the tree is like. Most surprising were the nearly spherical, muskmelon-size fruits shown below:

Schott's Ceiba, CEIBA SCHOTTII, mature fruits on leafless tree

I'd thought the fruits were slenderer. Once the fruits shed their cottony contents, their drying shells warp and wrinkle into odd shapes and remain on the tree awhile, giving the mostly leafless trees a bizarre and unkempt appearance. However, at the tips of certain branches new leaves -- digitately compound with seven or so leaflets -- are unfurling, their pale, springy greenness so promising and nice to see, as shown below:

Schott's Ceiba, CEIBA SCHOTTII, expanding leaves

from the January 28, 2006 Newsletter issued from Hacienda San Juan near Telchec Pueblo in northwestern Yucatan, MÉXICO
KAPOK
Several collections of books cluster in this and that corner at the hacienda. Many books were left by the previous owner and many more have been ruined by flooding from one or more hurricanes and thrown away. What remains is almost like a random collection in a Salvation Army used-book bin, everything from science fiction to classic novels and technical works.

Right now I have open next to me the Hand Book of Tropical Plants by HF Macmillan, published in New Delhi, India. The book's pages are yellowed and smell as you'd expect them to after moldering for many years in heavy heat and high humidity. It was written with a focus on tropical gardening in India and Ceylon, back in the days when English functionaries and plantation managers maintained palatial estates there. Its "Proposed Plan of a Garden" includes a garden house with a spacious verandah and a drawing room, with a building apart for the kitchen and the "boys" to live in, and a tennis court.

CEIBA SCHOTTII. Ceiba fruit I have this book out because right now a young Ceiba tree next the hacienda's entrance gate is bearing on its stout, leafless branches several cantaloupe-sized wads of what look like cotton. You can see one of those wads, which is the Ceiba's fruit splitting open to release very hairy seeds, with an immature, still unopened fruit at the lower left, at the right.

Macmillan's book was written back when Ceiba "cotton" was regarded as having value. He wrote:

"Until lately, kapok fibre has been used chiefly for stuffing pillows, cushions, etc., and during the war for life-saving waistcoats and similar articles. Recently, it has been employed for mixing with other fine fibres for textile purposes."

The war Macmillan mentioned was the First World War, and his kapok was the fuzz of the Ceiba tree, Ceiba pentandra, a member of the tropical Bombax Family. We have Ceiba pentandra trees in the Yucatán, but the one growing along our entrance road is a Yucatá endemic, in the whole world native only to the Yucatán Peninsula. It's CEIBA SCHOTTII, and I'll bet kapok was picked from this tree, too, though.

Our little Ceiba next to the gate exhibits none of a big Ceiba pentandra's majesty, and only a handful of its pods are releasing kapok. Actually the tree makes a rather awkward-looking presence, its naked, stubby branches bristling with broad-based spines, and the tree hardly rising above the surrounding scrub.