Couroupita guianensis

Another set of photographs and write-up from UBC Botanical Garden"s Eric La Fountaine today, featuring a species previously on BPotD (but in flower): Couroupita guainensis. Eric writes:

The cannonball tree has one of the most appropriate common names of any plant I know. Not often seen outside its native range, northern South America and southern Central America, it is grown as a sacred plant in Hindu temples in India and as an oddity in tropical botanical gardens.

The large, sweetly fragrant flowers (and later the fruit) are borne directly from the trunk and main branches (cauliflory) in large clusters on woody stalks that can be a few metres long. The heavy fruits drop from the tree with great force and may crack open upon landing, revealing a foul smelling pulp with a number of seeds. Wild peccaries and other animals eat the pulp and disperse the seeds in their waste.

For further reading and a description of the pollination and the unusual flower structure unique to Couroupita guianensis and other members of the Brazil nut family, the Encyclopedia of Earth has an excellent article: Couroupita guianensis. Posted by: Daniel Mosquin    Source