Ceiba is the name of a genus of many species of large trees found in tropical areas, including Mexico, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, West Africa, and Southeast Asia. Some species can grow to 70 m tall or more, with a straight, largely branchless, long trunk, spreading canopy, and buttress roots. Several trees in this genus including baobab are called Kapok tree.

Ceiba speciosa (formerly Chorisia speciosa), is a species of succulent, deciduous tree native to the tropical and subtropical forests of South America. The natural habitats of the tree are Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil. It grows fast in spurts when water is abundant, and sometimes reaches more than 20 meters in height.

Silk Floss Tree’s trunk is bottle-shaped, generally bulging in its lower third, measuring up to 2 meters in girth. The trunk is also covered with thick, sharp conical prickles. In younger trees, the trunk is green due to its high chlorophyll content, which makes it capable of performing photosynthesis when leaves are absent, with age it turns to gray. The branches are also covered with prickles.

The leaves are composed of 4-7 long leaflets. The flowers are creamy-whitish in the center and pink towards the tips of their five petals. They measure 10 cm in diameter and their shape is superficially similar to hibiscus flowers. It flowers at autumn. The fruits are ovoid capsules, 20 centimeters long, which contain bean-sized black seeds surrounded by a mass of fibrous, fluffy matter reminiscent of cotton or silk. The cotton inside the capsules has been used as stuffing cushions and is employed in packaging, as wood pulp to make paper, and in ropes.

Ceiba speciosa can reach 20 meters high and make a beautiful canopy. requires well-drained soil. It blooms best when it is watered regularly most of the time, but kept a bit on the dry side in late summer. Silk floss trees will drop their leaves when the temperature falls below 6ºC, but established specimens have been known to survive freezes down to 6ºC. Protect young trees from freezes.

Use in Landscape: Silk Floss Tree is cultivated mostly for ornamental purposes. It is a great exotic looking tree for quickly creating tropical effects. It can grow 1-1.5 meter per year when young and never fails to attract comments with its spiny green trunk and beautiful flowers that cover a bare tree. Outside of private gardens around the world, it is often planted along urban streets in subtropical areas, although its prickled trunks and limbs require safety buffer zones, especially around the trunks, in order to protect people and domesticated animals from its prickles.