From life jackets to tea, the kapok tree is filled with possibilities

Across Hong Kong, vibrant bombax trees, commonly known as kapok, are in flower. Bombax ceiba is the variety usually seen locally. Depending on soil conditions, and availability of water in early spring, the colour palette of the tree’s flower ranges from deep red to bright orange.

One large tree at the southern entrance to the Aberdeen Tunnel is perennially popular, as are those along the bottom of Route Twisk, in the New Territories.

The kapok is the floral emblem of Guangzhou; hundreds of superb mature trees can now be seen in full flower all over that city.

Within a few weeks, these showy flowers will produce fistsized, torpedo-shaped pods which – in another couple of months – will burst and send forth clouds of fluffy “tree-cotton” seeds. Wind-spread accounts for the large number of kapok trees encountered on unlikely hillside locations; no human planted these specimens.

The kapok was first extensively cultivated in Hong Kong in the mid-19th century, along with other introduced species such as rattan vines from Southeast Asia, Cook Island pines from the South Pacific, camphor laurel trees from Taiwan and other exotic plants with commercial applications.