Ceiba is a genus of flowering plants that belongs to the Malvaceae family and to the Bombacaceae subfamily. The genus Ceiba contains about ten species of tropical trees, including the famous baobab trees of Africa.
Ceiba trees are typically emergent, meaning that they form an umbrella-shaped canopy over the forest canopy. These trees are among the largest tropical trees, reaching up to 60 meters high in rainforests in the Amazon rainforest.
Baobabs trees. Hanspeter limacher
On the other hand, Ceiba trees are very important for the ecological balance in tropical forests, since they provide shelter for a considerable amount of animals and plants that develop a community within their branches.
Thus, each Ceiba tree can have a wide community of epiphytic animals and plants, which play key roles in the ecosystem in which they are established. Functions such as pollination, seed transport and others, are carried out by animals that live in the canopy of these trees or in their surroundings.
characteristics
The genus Ceiba contains almost ten species throughout the tropical forests. It is found within the Malvaceae family, specifically within the Bombacaceae subfamily. Ceiba trees are characterized by forming a large umbrella-shaped canopy in the forest canopy.
In this sense, its thick columnar stem often has large buttresses. The trunks and young branches are armed with thick conical spines and are generally green due to their photosynthetic pigments. The leaves are alternate and are composed of 5 to 8 leaflets with whole margins.
Ceiba trischistandra, Ceibo tree. Manabi province. Ecuador. Photo by Jaime del Castillo. Source: Wkimedia Commons
The radially asymmetric flowers can be from a small, almost imperceptible size (approximately 3 cm in Ceiba pentandra) to large and showy (more than 12 cm).
Usually the flowers are hard, white, pinkish-white, or red. The flowers have five stamens in a tube on the base.
Ceiba chodatii flower. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Ceiba fruits are large ellipsoid capsules up to 20 cm long. They have five woody valves that open to release a lot of fluff, in which many small brown seeds are embedded. The fluff fibers are not attached to the seeds. The fibers are 1.5 to 3 cm long and covered by a hydrophobic waxy substance.
Ceiba flowers open in the afternoon, and are pollinated by bats that feed on nectar and pollen. The seeds are dispersed by the wind in C. pentandra.
Flowering is much more frequent on the edges of forests or in very dry places. Ceiba trees are self-compatible, which means that they can self-pollinate to produce viable seeds.
Pollination takes place at night and the fertilization of the ovules, a process that follows the deposition of pollen on the stigma, is substantially temperature dependent (approximately 20 ° C for best results).
Otherwise the flowers would fall before fertilization occurs. Many animals visit the remaining flowers in the morning, to collect the remains of nectar and perhaps parts of the flowers.
Habitats and distribution
Ceiba trees grow in semi-deciduous tropical dry forests, as well as in evergreen moist forests. For example, Ceiba pentantra is native to all of tropical America, from Mexico through Central and South America to Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. It is also native to East Africa.
All other members of the genus are found in the Neotropics. Ceiba trichistandra is found in the dry forests of the Pacific coast of Ecuador and Peru. Ceiba pentandra has been transported to other tropical regions by humans and is even cultivated in warm areas as a novelty tree.
Trees lose their leaves in the dry season, a behavior known as drought expiration. For its part, flowering and fruiting take place when trees lose their leaves. This is when this enables the help of mammalian pollinators, mainly bats, to pollinate the flowers of these trees.
In the same way, the loss of leaves also helps the seeds to be dispersed by the wind. However, the seeds can also be dispersed by water, where the fruits remain floating. When this happens, the fruits are soaked, allowing the water to remove the fibers that cover them.
It is believed that this last characteristic could explain how the trees of the genus Ceiba came to Africa from South America, the region where this genus is believed to have originated.
Ecology
From an ecological point of view, Ceiba trees grow fast in high light conditions, which makes them the first to colonize light areas.
Many trees of this genus are adapted to drought conditions and are therefore capable of storing water in the cortical cells of their trunk. Sometimes this gives the trunk a swollen or bulging appearance.
Source: pixabay.com
After a clarification process, the kapok trees that recolonize these open areas tend to have a shorter, busier and more open shape. In low-lying rainforests, the spreading crown with large branches of the Ceiba trees are often heavily laden with a large community of diverse epiphytes.
These aerial parts of plants provide a home for countless species of animals, such as insects, frogs, and snakes. Birds such as toucans, flycatchers, and a host of omnivorous mammals such as white-faced capuchin monkeys feed on these small animals.
The Ceiba trees are thus a focal point for a complex ecological community that develops its life high in the forest canopy.
Species
- Ceiba acuminata (S.Watson) Rose
- Ceiba aesculifolia (Kunth) Britten & Baker f.
- Ceiba allenii Woodson
- Bolivian Ceiba Britten & Baker f.
- Ceiba chodatii (Hassl.) Ravenna
- Ceiba crispiflora (Kunth) Ravenna
- Ceiba erianthos (Cav.) K. Schum.
- Ceiba glaziovii (Kuntze) K. Schum.
- Ceiba insignis (Kunth) PEGibbs & Semir
- Ceiba jasminodora (A.St.Hil.) K. Schum.
- Ceiba lupuna PEGibbs & Semir
- Ceiba pentandra (L.) Gaertn.
- Ceiba pubiflora (A.St.-Hil.) K. Schum.
- Ceiba salmonea (Ulbr.) Bakh.
- Ceiba samauma (Mart. & Zucc.) K. Schum.
- Ceiba schottii Britten & Baker f.
- Ceiba soluta (Donn.Sm.) Ravenna
- Ceiba speciosa (A.St.-Hil.) Ravenna
- Ceiba trischistandra (A.Gray) Bakh.
- Ceiba ventricosa (Nees & Mart.) Ravenna
References
- The Plant List (2010). Version 1. Posted on the internet; http://www.theplantlist.org/. available: http://www.theplantlist.org/browse/A/Malvaceae/Ceiba/. (Accessed on May 03, 2018)
- Gibbs, P., Semir, J., 2003. A Taxonomic Revision of the Genus Ceiba (Bombacaceae). Anales Botanical Garden of Madrid 60 (2): 259-300
- Gibbs, P., Bianchi, MB, Ranga, T., 2004. Effects of Self-, Chase and Mixed Self / Cross-pollinations on Pistil Longevity and Fruit Set in Ceiba Species (Bombacaceae) with Late-acting Self-incompatibility. Annals of Botany 94: 305–310.
- Dick, CW, Bermingham E., Lemes, MR, Gribel, R., 2007. Extreme long-distance dispersal of the lowland tropical rainforest tree Ceiba pentandra (Malvaceae) in Africa and the Neotropics. Molecular Ecology 16: 3039–3049
- Quesada, M., Herrerías, Y., Lobo, JA, Sánchez, G., Rosas, F., Aguilar, R., 2013. Long-term effects of habitat fragmentation on mating patterns and gene flow of a tropical dry forest tree, Ceiba aesculifolia (Malvaceae: Bombacoideae). American Journal of Botany 100 (6): 1095–1101