It is fall in southwest Florida ,
which means that a few trees, like the bald cypress and the frangipani, are
losing their needles/leaves and will remain naked all winter. They are in the
minority, however, and most gardens remain green, which is one reason snowbirds
like to congregate here. It isn't only the warm breezes and the blue skies that
attract them.
We have another deciduous plant that also loses its leaves,
but follows that phase almost immediately with extravagant blooms, all the
better to ward off our version of winter. These flowers, in various shades of
pink, will stay on the trees almost until it's time to leaf out again. Called the
silk floss tree, this fall stunner is a relative of the kapok.
Next spring, the silk floss tree will sport, along with its
new leaves, avocado-size pods containing silky threads, but they are not as
good as kapok for stuffing. The silk floss tree has a couple of other strange
characteristics. The trunk is bulbous at the bottom and is covered with
nasty-looking thorns.
A similar, but unrelated, tree on St.
John in the Virgin Islands is
called the "monkey no climb tree."
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