Bombax insigneWall.

WFO wfo-0000568432 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Bombax insigne, photographed by Kristof Zyskowski
fig. a Kristof Zyskowski, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-30 / obs. 196426095
Bombax insigne, photographed by Dinesh Valke
fig. b Dinesh Valke, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 125782748
Bombax insigne, photographed by S.MORE
fig. c S.MORE, CC0 1.0 / obs. 58323947
Bombax insigne, photographed by Dinesh Valke
fig. d Dinesh Valke, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 128345318
Bombax insigne, photographed by Dinesh Valke
fig. e Dinesh Valke, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 133354620
Bombax insigne, photographed by Dinesh Valke
fig. f Dinesh Valke, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 122690509
Bombax insigne, photographed by Dinesh Valke
fig. g Dinesh Valke, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 127201008
Bombax insigne, photographed by Dinesh Valke
fig. h Dinesh Valke, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 127181702

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000671490
Filed as
Bombax insigne Wall.
Det. by
Robyns, A.
Collected
Wight. 1851-12-01
Origin
IN
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 9 botanical countries

Regions where Bombax insigne is native: China South-Central, Andaman Is., Assam, Bangladesh, India, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam China South-CentralAssamBangladeshIndiaLaosMyanmarThailandVietnam Andaman Is.
Native distribution of Bombax insigne, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Andaman Is. AND ASIA-TROPICAL
Assam ASS
Bangladesh BAN
India IND
Laos LAO
Myanmar MYA
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 47 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 14.7 °C 17.0 °C 25.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.8 °C 33.3 °C 35.6 °C
Annual rainfall 2,655 mm 3,195 mm 5,737 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 2 mm 4 mm 102 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 47 research-grade observations of Bombax insigne that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 12 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Bombax festivum Wall.
  • Bombax insigne subsp. genuina Prain
  • Bombax insigne var. alba Prain
  • Bombax insigne var. andamanica Prain
  • Bombax insigne var. polystemon Prain
  • Bombax insigne var. tenebrosum (Dunn) Robyns
  • Bombax insigne var. wightii Prain
  • Bombax scopulorum Dunn
  • Bombax tenebrosum Dunn
  • Gossampinus insignis Bakh.
  • Salmalia insignis (Wall.) Schott & Endl.
  • Salmalia scopulorum (Dunn) Stearn

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.