Cannonball Flower (Couroupita guianensis)

 

 Cannonball Flower (Couroupita guianensis)

  Cannonball Flower (Couroupita guianensis) blossom

The Cannonball Flower (Couroupita guianensis) is beautiful nice to look. Flowers are reddish with a yellow tinge on the outside, fragrant, with stamens borne on an overarching androphore.

Inflorescence is racemose, arising from the trunk and other large branches. Fruit is a large, reddish-brown globose, 15 to 24 centimeters, with a woody capsule, and each containing 200 to 300 seeds.

Cannonball Flower (Couroupita guianensis) blossom

The flowers are born in large bunches up to 80 m(meters) long. Some trees flower profusely, until the entire trunk is buried in flowers. One tree can bear 1000 flowers per day. They are strongly scented, especially at night, and in the early morning.They are large, up to 6 centimeters wide, and often brightly colored, the six petals in shades of pink and red near the bases and yellowish toward the tips. 

 

There is a ring of stamens at the center, and an arrangement to stamens that have been modified into a hood. The large fruit, which is woody and very spherical, measuring up to 25 centimeters wide, gives the species the common name "cannonball tree". A smaller fruit contains perhaps 65 seeds, while a large one can have 550.One tree can bear 150 fruits. The fruit takes up to a year to mature in most areas, sometimes as long as 18 months.

 

 Cannonball Flower (Couroupita guianensis)

Cannonball Flower (Couroupita guianensis) blossom

The flowers lack nectar, but are very attractive to bees coming for the pollen. The carpenter bee Xylocopa brasilianorum is a common pollinator of cultivated trees in Rio de Janeiro, just outside the tree's native range. Other carpenter bees such as Xylocopa frontalis, as well as wasps, flower flies, and bumblebees visit the flowers. The flowers produce two types of pollen, fertile pollen from the ring stamens and sterile pollen from the hood structure.

The Pictures taken from Penang Botanical Garden.

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Cannonball Tree
Cannonball Fruits
Cannonball Flower