Kapok

A tall straight grey trunk on great buttress roots, its limbs spread level under a flat umbrella of leaves.

About 16 m tall out in the open. In the old forests it towers far higher: most stand two to four times that, the tallest up to nine times, and now and then an old giant stands among the rest.

Where it grows

Land	How many of the trees
Jungle	Two in five

Trees of a kind keep together in stands about 60 m across.

Through the year

It leafs out in spring, its bare twigs budding green first. In autumn its leaves turn orange-red to wine, each tree in its own time, then fall pixel by pixel until the crown is bare twigs. It stands bare through the winter. In the warm south, where it never grows cold, it keeps its leaves all year.

In play

Its trunk stops men and horses, who go round it. Wildfire leaves it black and bare, and burnt or felled ground grows back over about four years.