| The Kaohsiung City Flower |
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The Kaohsiung City Flower The Ceiba Flower
The ceiba flower is also called the guo tree, red cotton and the banchih tree, the panjhih flower, the hero tree, wood cotton, the fireworks flower, but is more commonly known as the kapok tree.
The book " Flower In A Mirror" describes the ceiba as follows:“This flower looks like the camellia and grows like red cotton in bloom. The fruit is as big as a wineglass with cotton spewing out from the opening.” The flower makes way for a long oval-shaped fruit with an inner wall made up of silk-like fibers, so it is also called "wood cotton." The tree can grow to as high as 30 meters. The ceiba flower consists of five fleshy petals, with colors of orange to scarlet. The story goes that when the flowers are in full bloom, they shine red all over the faces looking up at them, so they were called "fireworks flowers" by the ancients.
The ceiba tree comes from India and is a deciduous arbor with red and orange flowers, and it blooms in spring, from February to April every year. In Kaohsiung city, ceiba trees are found particularly at the Art Museum, on Minghua Rd., Linsen Rd., Dingjinjhong St., Mingtan Rd., Chinan Highway, Minzu First Rd., Demin Rd., Hedong Rd., but are in fact, all around the city. As the strikingly beautiful blooms are very big and red, clustering at the ends of tree branches and twigs and can be seen all over the city, the ceiba flower was voted the city flower by the citizens of Kaohsiung. |
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