Red Cotton Tree

At the beginning of Spring, in Hong Kong, the Red Cotton Tree (Bombay Celba, 木棉, 紅棉樹, 攀枝花) blooms with big, red, woody flowers.  They make a pretty impressive sight.  The big, red, woody flowers are good for kicking, like a jianzi (毽子).  They are also a key ingredient in a kind of herbal tea, which can be cooling for your body. 

At the end of spring, the silky cotton fibres burst from their pods, carrying tiny seeds away.  A 10 cm pod gives you a handful of cotton.  I have long been tempted to collect enough cotton to make something out of them.  How many pods worth of cotton do you need to make a padded cotton jacket?

The padded jacket, was not what nature intended to happen to the silky cotton.  Their job is to carry the seeds away, to start new cotton trees.  Cotton trees in Hong Kong are often planted on the road side in the city.  The seeds usually end up dying on the concrete, instead of germinating and growing into actual trees in any kind of soil.  

Humans and nature ate often not in harmony.