Across Hong Kong, vibrant bombax trees, commonly known as kapok, are in flower. Bombax ceiba is the variety usually seen locally. Depending on soil conditions, and availability of water in early spring, the colour palette of the tree’s flower ranges from deep red to bright orange.
One large tree at the southern entrance to the Aberdeen Tunnel is perennially popular, as are those along the bottom of Route Twisk, in the New Territories.
The kapok is the floral emblem of Guangzhou; hundreds of superb mature trees can now be seen in full flower all over that city.
Within a few weeks, these showy flowers will produce fistsized, torpedo-shaped pods which – in another couple of months – will burst and send forth clouds of fluffy “tree-cotton” seeds. Wind-spread accounts for the large number of kapok trees encountered on unlikely hillside locations; no human planted these specimens.
Popularly known as “tree cotton” or “tree silk”, kapok had become an important crop elsewhere in Asia by the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its yield was used as a filling material for pillows and furniture. Rising global prosperity in the late Victorian era meant more people could afford comfortable armchairs, and the trend towards “overstuffed” sofas began. As kapok fibre was much cheaper than horsehair (the usual upholstery material until then), demand rapidly grew.
Kapok’s main value during this period, however, came from massively expanded steamship networks, and the enhanced importance of what today would be called “health and safety” regulations. After a series of needless maritime tragedies, shipping lines were legally mandated to carry adequate numbers of lifeboats, as well as life vests and buoys for all passengers.
Light and water-repellent, kapok fibre was the main filling for buoyancy aids at this time; the material experienced a significant commodity boom as shipping volumes increased.
Kapok fibre remained highly sought after until critical Allied shortages occurred during the second world war. The Netherlands East Indies (modern-day Indonesia), until then the world’s major kapok-fibre supplier, was occupied by the Japanese in 1942, and the rapid development of artificial buoyancy alternatives, such as various forms of spun-fibre plastics, was undertaken.
Cheaper to produce and more durable, man-made substitutes rapidly replaced natural kapok fibre after the war in other commercial applications, such as pillow and cushion fillings.
Demand declined for some decades, but kapok fibre has recently enjoyed a minor resurgence as a natural, organic alternative to man-made stuffing.
Kapok flowers also have culinary uses. Dried, they are a key ingredient in popular Chinese cooling drink five-flower tea. In public parks, people collect the flowers almost as soon as they have fallen, before taking them home to dry.
The fleshy cores from the flower are used as a vegetable-like seasonal ingredient in certain northern Thai and Burmese curries.
Fast-rotting kapok flowers make a welcome accelerant to the local gardener’s compost piles; seemingly nothing from this marvellous tree is wasted.
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This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Then and now: Cotton tree drive
