Red cotton tree (Bombax ceiba)

Randu alas or kapok alas or red silk-cotton or red cotton tree (Bombax ceiba) is a species in Malvaceae like other trees commonly known as cotton trees. This tropical tree has perpendicular stems and deciduous leaves in winter. Red flowers with 5 petals appear in the spring before the leaves grow new.

B. ceiba produces capsules containing white fibers such as cotton. Old trees up to 60 meters in the wet tropics, but wood is too soft to use. Young stems and branches are equipped with cone spines, but eroded with age.

The palate leaves have 6 leaflets radiating from the center point or the tip of the petiole, 7-10 cm wide, 13-15 cm long. Flexible leaf stalks up to 20 cm long. Solitary or clustered cup-shaped flowers, axilla or sub-terminal, follicular near the tip of the branch, on average 7-11 cm wide, 14 cm long, petel up to 12 cm long.

Short staminal tube, more than 60 in 5 bundles. The stigma is bright red, 9 cm long, the ovary is pink to 1.5-2 cm long with skin covered in white silk hair for 1 mm in length. Many seeds, long, ovoid, black or gray and packed in white cotton.

The fruit has a length of up to 13 cm, is green when young but becomes brown when ripe. Flowers are very attractive to wildlife where many birds make holes in unopened flower buds. Honey bees collect pollen and many insects gather.

Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Tracheophyta
Subphylum: Angiospermae
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Malvales
Family: Malvaceae
Subfamily: Bombacoideae
Genus: Bombax
Species: Bombax ceiba
Variety: Bombax ceiba var. ceiba, Bombax ceiba var. leiocarpum

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