Cannon Ball Tree (HT 2017-289)

📷: Brendon Phuah

Native to Trinidad and the northern regions of South America, the Cannon Ball Tree is a beautiful tree with a fascinating and curious form. The name Couroupita is derived from the South American vernacular name for this tree (kouroupitoumou); and guianensis means 'from the Guianas', a region in north-central South America.

The tree is distinctly known for its cauliflorous trunk, which is lined with a mass of short woody branches bearing large showy flowers and large round fruits. The shape and size of the fruits look very much like cannon balls giving rise to its common name.

The fragrant flowers are fleshy, waxy and large, measuring about 12 cm across. The flowers produce two different type of pollen - a disk of numerous short and yellow ring-stamens, which produce fertile pollen, arranged around reduced styles, and a pink-white anemone-like structure of hood-stamens, which produce sterile pollen. Instead of nectar, pollinating insect such as Carpenter Bees (Xylocopa spp.) feed on the sterile pollen. Developing fruits can take about a year or more before reaching maturity. Ripe fruits usually fall from the tree, sometimes cracking to reveal the jelly-like pulp inside that oxidises from white to bluish green colour and emits a pungent odour when exposed to the air. In the Amazon forests, the pulp is reportedly appetizing to animals like monkeys and peccaries, which aid in seed dispersal.

This Cannon Ball Tree on Tanglin Road was likely germinated from seeds collected in 1934 by Prof. E.J.H Corner. Prof. Corner collected these seeds from Cannon Ball Trees that he saw when he visited the famous Peradeniya Royal Botanical Gardens near Kandy, Sri Lanka. It was estimated that this Tree was more than 75 years of age when it was endorsed as a Heritage Tree in 2017.

For more information on this species, please refer to NParks Flora & Fauna Web profile. ↗ (opens in new tab)