We didn’t do much of anything this weekend. Talked with the other camp hosts and the campers in our area and finished up some setting up things we had to do.
Below find a picture of kapok tree. I didn’t take this picture, I found it online but no reference as to who took it for me to give credit. This picture was taken in Florida but I’m not sure where.
There is kapok tree in Key West and I was too close to it to get the whole tree in and since we saw it at the end of the first day and my feet were killing me, well, I wasn’t walking the half block away to take the picture of the whole tree. This IS, after all, why Al Gore invented the Internet, so that when I need pictures I didn’t get I can find them online.
The kapok tree is also known the as the Silkcotton Tree and can grow as much as 130 feet or more.
It was the sacred tree of the Mayan people who believed that the souls of the dead climbed a mythical kapok whose branches reached to heaven. This is not surprising because a kapok tree can grow as much as 10 feet in a year.
What’s most notable about this tree is the tree trunk and root system. It has large buttresses at the bottom that grow outward as the tree grows upward.
Most commercial kapok trees come from the Island of Java in Indonesia. It is used to make furniture, stuffing, insulation and is found inside of some life jackets. Kapok oil is made from the seeds of the tree and is used to make soap.
The wood is soft and called bentang in Africa. It is used for making dugout canoes, carvings and caskets.
Now you know all about the kapok tree.
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