Ceiba pentandra(L.) Gaertn.

Kapok Tree

WFO wfo-0000592594 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Ceiba pentandra, photographed by Annika Lindqvist
fig. a Annika Lindqvist, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-01-27 / obs. 179079189
Ceiba pentandra, photographed by Donald Davesne
fig. b Donald Davesne, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197005054
Ceiba pentandra, photographed by Daniel Pineda Vera
fig. c Daniel Pineda Vera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177111276
Ceiba pentandra, photographed by Ben Costamagna
fig. d Ben Costamagna, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 169127373
Ceiba pentandra, photographed by Kristof Zyskowski
fig. e Kristof Zyskowski, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168576992
Ceiba pentandra, photographed by Sebastián de Jesús Herrera Buenfil
fig. f Sebastián de Jesús Herrera Buenfil, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 138788636
Ceiba pentandra, photographed by Isaac Chacón
fig. g Isaac Chacón, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 133673488

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 141 observations

Peak flowering in Jan, from 141 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 39 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 cumanense Kunth
  • Bombax guineense Schum. & Thonn.
  • Bombax guineensis Schumach.
  • Bombax inerme L.
  • Bombax mompoxense Kunth
  • Bombax occidentale Spreng.
  • Bombax orientale Spreng.
  • Bombax pentandrum L.
  • Bombax pentandrum Jacq.
  • Bombax plumosum Noronha
  • Ceiba anfractuosa (DC.) M.Gómez
  • Ceiba caribaea (DC.) A.Chev.
  • Ceiba casearia Medik.
  • Ceiba guineensis (Schumach.) A.Chev.
  • Ceiba guineensis var. ampla A.Chev.
  • Ceiba guineensis var. clausa A.Chev.
  • Ceiba occidentalis (Spreng.) Burkill
  • Ceiba pentandra f. albolana Ulbr.
  • Ceiba pentandra f. grisea Ulbr.
  • Ceiba pentandra var. caribaea (DC.) Bakh.
  • Ceiba pentandra var. clausa Ulbr.
  • Ceiba pentandra var. dehiscens Ulbr.
  • Ceiba pentandra var. indica Bakh.
  • Ceiba thonnerii A.Chev.

and 15 more.

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.

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