In which months does the kapok tree shed its leaves, bloom, bear fruit, and grow new leaves?
Kapok, also known as red cotton, hero tree, panzhihua, mottled cotton, mottled cotton tree, panzhi. The flowers are orange-red. Every year from February to March, after the leaves have all fallen, it enters the flowering period, blooming from March to April, flowering first and then growing leaves, and bearing fruit in summer. The kapok tree has a masculine beauty in its form. Kapok flowers are large and beautiful, and the tree is majestic, making it suitable for planting as an ornamental garden tree or street tree.
From ancient times to the present, the Dai people of Xishuangbanna have made clever and full use of kapok: in ancient Chinese texts, Dai brocade is mentioned many times, made from the fruit floss of kapok and called “tong brocade”, famous in the Central Plains; kapok flower floss or fiber is used as filling for pillows and bedding, very soft and comfortable; at the dining table, dishes cooked with kapok petals also appear from time to time; in addition, in Dai love songs, young women often praise their beloved young men as tall kapok trees.
Before the Yuan Dynasty, what was referred to as kapok in ancient China was all cotton. The famous Zen token “kapok kasaya” was actually a cotton cloth kasaya. In the Essentials of Agriculture and Sericulture, compiled by the Agricultural Office of the Yuan Dynasty, with its first draft completed in the 10th year of the Zhiyuan era (1273), there is a chapter on kapok methods, detailing cotton cultivation techniques, in which it is recorded: “In recent years, ramie has been cultivated in Henan, and kapok has been planted in Shaanxi; they flourish and thrive, no different from their native places, and the people of these two regions have deeply benefited from them. Therefore, following the results already tested, let them be planted wherever they are.”
Kapok first appeared with the meaning of the kapok tree in Ge Hong's Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital from the Jin Dynasty: during the Western Han, Zhao Tuo, King of Nanyue, presented kapok trees as tribute to the Han emperor, “one zhang and two chi tall, one trunk with three branches, and at night its radiance seemed about to burn.” In 1959, Guangzhou mayor Zhu Guang wrote 50 poems in Gazing South of the River · Guangzhou Is Good, among which is the line: “Guangzhou is good; people say the kapok is heroic. Leaves fall and flowers bloom, flying like fire phoenixes; towering to the sky and holding up the sun, dancing like red dragons. March is just the spring breeze.”
As early as the 1930s, Guangzhou had designated the kapok flower as its city flower, and in 1982 it selected it again as the city flower. Because kapok blooms with red flowers, it is also called red cotton flower locally, and “red cotton pavilions” can be seen everywhere in Guangzhou. The people of Guangzhou use the bright, fire-like large red flower to symbolize the striving, upward spirit of heroes, so the kapok tree is also honored as the “hero tree”, the kapok flower has become the “hero flower”, and road sections planted with kapok as street trees are called “hero roads”. Even the stands of the Guangdong Olympic Stadium are designed so that each small section looks like a petal, together resembling a blooming kapok flower, and the emblem of the municipal government website also uses the kapok flower, while Guangzhou's famous Garden Hotel, China Southern Airlines, and South China University of Technology all use the kapok flower as their logo.
Panzhihua City is located in the southwestern border area of Sichuan Province, at the junction of Sichuan and Yunnan. Tall, upright panzhihua trees grow everywhere in the urban area, and Panzhihua City gets its name from this, while panzhihua is kapok.