Petal Power - African Tulip Tree
This tree with beautiful red tulip-like flowers was an African immigrant in the early part of the last century. It has now been naturalized in many parts of Asia as an ornamental shade tree, which probably explains its presence along Po Tong Road on the way into town.
As the ripe ball-shaped cluster of flower pods split open, starting with the outside of the cluster, they reveal brilliantly coloured torch-like blooms that last several days. Little boys in this Fountain Tree's native land find it great fun as they press the soft unopened flower buds to squirt a small jet of fluid at friends and enemies.
These trees can each produce hundreds of pods, which in turn contain hundreds of elliptical seeds that are easily windborne and can float. Seedlings germinate rapidly, colonizing wasteland with ease, and the trees grow quickly, so fast that in some areas they are considered similar to a "weed".
In Western Africa, the flowers, leaves and bark are used in traditional medicines.
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The Explore Store has many books that highlight these and other flowers in the Sai Kung area.
Drop in and check out: Rhona Baptiste’s Trees and Flowering Plants of South China, AFCD’s Hong Kong Wild Flowers and Hong Kong Discovery’s Hong Kong Coastal Plants, Common Shrubland Plants, and Hong Kong Poisonous Plants.