Ceiba Mill.

Trees, infrequently strangler epiphytes, generally tall, deciduous, armed or unarmed, the trunk buttressed or not. Leaves petiolate, compound-digitate; leaflets 5-9, articulate, the blade often denticulate near the apex. Inflorescences grouped toward the tip of the branchlets, axillary, fasciculate, or flowers solitary or geminate. Flotwers hermaphrodite, actinomorphous, sometimes subzygomorphous, with tufted hairs, pedicellate, bracteolate, the bractlets fugacious; receptacle eglandular; calyx campanulate to more or less tubiform, truncate or irregularly lobed, persistent or accrescent; petals 5, adnate to the base of the staminal column, fleshy; stamens 5, the staminal column conical or the lower part cylindric and thickened and the upper part conical, sometimes provided with one whorl of staminodia, the filaments bearing each 1-3 linear to anfractuose anthers; anthers 1-to 2(-4)-thecate, longi-tudinally dehiscent; pollen colporate, the sexine reticulate; ovary superior to sub-inferior, sessile, 5-celled, the cells many-ovulate; style filiform or dilated upward; stigma capitate or 5-lobulate. Capsules coriaceous to ligneous, loculicidally 5-valvate, the central columella winged and persistent; seeds numerous, obovoid or subglobose, imbedded in copious kapok; cotyledons epigeal and expanded above the ground level, opposite, petiolate, folded and foliaceous.