The Cannonball Tree is a tropical tree with anti-cancer, anti-bacterial and antifungal properties. A tall tree reaching to ~30m, the trunk bears its flowers. From afar, these delicate flowers give the impression someone has wrapped a voile round its trunk.
Close up, you can see clusters of yellow buds sticking out of the thick trunk near ground level. When in bloom, the petals are red. On this day of visit, the tree has just dropped its petals.
A few months later, the blooms were still not as prolific, but you can see a few more blooms in this picture below. These fragrant flowers are used in perfume and cosmetics. In India the trees are planted near Hindu temples because the flowers look like the hood of the snake round Lord Shiva’s neck.
Notice the thin branches bearing the flowers. When the tree bears fruit, they dangle from these thin twigs off the trunk. From humble beginnings, the fruit grows to the size of a cannon. Hence its name. Below you can see the different maturing stages of the fruit. The mature fruits have hard shells, useful for making household items such as containers.
In my middle-grade book, I described the fruit dropping to the ground when ripe. On this day when I visited, I was lucky enough to find some on the ground. With the size that they are, they make quite a mess on the pedestrian walkway. If they should fall on the concrete pavement and not the grass verge, the shells crack open. They give out a pungent smell of stagnant rotting water. I had to hold my breath when I took these photos. Needless to say I did not hang around to take too many pictures.
While I love this tree for its unique flowering position, it is not the shadiest tree for a hot country like Singapore (see my previous blog on Rain Trees). It is a very tall tree, but all its leaves culminate at the top. Here are a couple of pictures to demonstrate how tall they are. You can also see how they form part of the backdrop of city living in Singapore, lining the edges of the roads to provide shade for pedestrians.
The scientific name of the Cannonball Tree is Couroupita guianensis. If you want more information of the tree, NParks is a great resource of tropical fauna. If you visit Singapore and want to see it in person, it can be found in the Singapore Botanic Gardens and Gardens-By-the-Bay. These trees were taken along Tanglin Road at the junction just before Tanglin Mall.
My book, Secrets of the Great Fire Tree, describes a tree central to the plot of the story. This tree does not exist. However the flowering position of the Cannonball tree is so unique it had to feature in my story. Its medicinal properties fitted the plot. I combined this with another fascinating tropical tree and created a hybrid. I used the Cannonball tree’s unusual trunk to create the appearance. My fictional tree is named the Great Fire Tree.
If you’ve enjoyed this post, then you might be interested in another two local trees also mentioned in my book. I’ve described them in a previous blog about tropical trees.
This article was first published 1 Apr 2019. Updated 30 Apr 2023.
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Justine Laismith 