Indian Kapok Tree - Ugly But Useful (Bombax ceiba)

Here is a tree that will definitely get your attention! The photo above is from our trip yesterday to Longwood Gardens. It is an Indian Kapok tree, aka Silk Cotton tree, aka Bombax ceiba erianthos. Of course what caught my eye was those huge thorns. The tree grows these thorns to protect itself from animals that might chew at its bark. The thorns fall off as the tree gets bigger and older. This one was about 20 feet tall and 3 feet around - they can grow to 125 ft tall and 10 feet around.

Kapok trees are known for their fruit, which are filled with a cottony material that is more water resistant than other natural fibers. Before synthetic fibers were developed, kapok was commonly used for insulation and stuffing, especially for life jackets. Below is a photo of kapok fruit pods, courtesy of Wikimedia.


That is not the end of the wonders of kapok. Kapok seed oil can be used to make soap, and its wood is soft and light weight. The gum of the kapok tree is a traditional Asian remedy for stomach ailments. The roots of young trees used to be made into a candy that was alleged to have aphrodisiac properties. In the spring, beautiful red flowers appear. Young petals are used in some herbal teas. Below is a photo of these flowers from Wikimedia.


The kapok tree also has a long literary history. Two different Hindu myths offer explanations for the thorns on the bark, and the tree serves two functions in the Hindu description of hell. The enticing red flowers draw damned souls to the tree, but its fruit offers only a mouth full of cotton. The tree's thorns are also used to torture hell's denizens.

A more modern story involves a cousin of the Indian Kapok tree, known as Ceiba pentandra. In the children's book The Great Kapok Tree, a young man is dissuaded from cutting down a tree in the Amazon rain forest after receiving a lesson in ecology from the other inhabitants of the forest.

Longwood Gardens Christmas Display

Today our family visited Longwood Gardens, in Kennett Square, PA. Longwood Gardens is one of the premier botanical gardens in the US. I couldn't find a Top 10 List for botanical gardens, so we'll have to take their word for it. When you see my photos, I think you will agree they are pretty premier.

Longwood Gardens was created by Pierre du Pont, the great-grandson of the founder of the DuPont chemical company. Pierre began building his gardens in 1907. Today there are 11,000 different types of plants here.

The 85 ft long floral carpet floating on the pool above is made from Barkos Red begonias, Enduring White poinsettias, green moss, English ivy, and painted pine cones. The Christmas tree is also decorated with Barkos Red begonias.

Enjoy the flowers (and fruit) below, and Happy Holidays!

Paphiopedilum g. Leeanum (Orchid)


x Laeliocattleya g. 'Platinum Sun' (Orchid)


x Doritaenopsis 'Leopard Prince' Sogo F-611 (Orchid)


x Laelio cattleya g. 'Bonanza' cv. Vesuvius (Orchid)


Dianthus caryophyllus 'Brocade' (Carnation)


Cyclamen persicum (Cyclamen)


x Citrofortunella microcarpa (Calamondin Orange)


x Guzvriesea 'Patricia' (Painted Feather)


Hibiscus rosa-sinensis 'Jason' (Chinese Hibiscus)


Hibiscus rosa-sinensis 'Night Fire' (Chinese Hibiscus)


Hibiscus rosa-sinensis 'Erin Rachael' (Chinese Hibiscus)


Rosa 'Tombola' (Floribunda Rose)


Begonia x hiemalis 'Barkos Red' (Winter-Flowering Begonia)


Lilium 'Tiny Icon' (Asiatic Hybrid Lily)


Anthurium 'Orange Hot' (Anthurium)

Red Tailed Hawk Chases Squirrel

"Mommy, there's an eagle in our tree!" I knew this was probably not the case, but I'm easily distracted from household chores, so I went out on the deck to investigate. Our neighbor's little girls were pointing up into the huge oak that spans our two yards. With a little direction from their mom, I was able to find the "eagle". I was pretty sure it was a hawk, but I didn't try to explain the difference to them. "Eagle" sounds cooler anyway.

I went back inside to grab my camera and binoculars. As I was busy writing down field marks, the neighbor two houses away came down. He had followed the hawk from his yard, where he told us it had snapped up a vole.

His belly must not have been full, because he was carefully scanning our yard for his next snack. Every once in a while he would crane his neck or tilt his head, his interest piqued by one of the many small animals that run from the shelter of one bush or deck to the next. You can see this by comparing his relaxed stare in the left photo below to his "squirrel alert!" on the right.













After a long while, it seemed like he was more interested in digesting the vole. I thought it was safe to sneak inside and grab my field guide. Of course, when I came back, the neighbors told me how I had missed him leap out of the tree and soar across my yard. He was now on top of the wooden swing set of the neighbors on our other side.

As I walked across our yard, I saw what had caused him to move - a squirrel in the neighbor's yard behind us. He jumped off the swing set, and the squirrel ran up a pine tree. If the squirrel was scared, he didn't show it. He ran with the same bounding stride that squirrels always seem to use.

But the hawk behaved uncharacteristically, climbing up the tree after the squirrel. The two of them went up the tree in a spiral, always on opposite sides of the trunk. The squirrel was in his world, so easily beat the hawk up into the dense branches at the top of the tree. The hawk's talons were made for pouncing on squirrels from the sky, not climbing trees. His broad shoulders and large wings made his job even harder.

Defeated this time, the hawk dropped to the ground. He slowly ran and flapped his long wings, having a difficult time getting airborne from this awkward position. He crossed the road in front of our neighbor's house right about at the height of a car radiator grille. Now I understood why I sometimes saw road killed hawks.

I really wanted to follow this bird to his next perch, and watch his next attempt to scoop up a rodent. But my leaking toilet calls me...

Darwin Contemplates the Caterpillar - Arsenura Armida

The photo above is from a family vacation to Mexico. It has taken me four years, but I have finally identified the creatures on the tree. The tour guide just called them "giant caterpillars", but they were much bigger than any caterpillar I had ever seen.

Thanks to the wonderful website WhatsThatBug.com, I found out that four other people had seen the same caterpillars, one in Honduras and three in the same area we visited near Cancun (the tour guides must bring everyone past the same tree!). They are Arsenura Armida, a type of silk moth from the family Saturniidae. Other than being unusually large and producing low quality wild silk, these caterpillars stand out due to their bright coloring.

My photo shows these caterpillars in their final "instar", or final molting phase, before they transform into pupae. Here is a website that shows some of the other instars, along with a lot of other technical details. You can see that the caterpillars are even more brightly colored in their earlier instars. If you compare the photos from the first instar to the last you would hardly say they were the same species. (You can tell my photo is the final instar because their "horns" have fallen off.)

An interesting historical note is that the great Charles Darwin was stumped by the colorful displays of caterpillars like these. Darwin's explanation for bright colors was that they aided in sexual selection (think of bright red male cardinals competing for the attention of brown females). But brightly colored caterpillars did not fit Darwin's theory, since caterpillars do not mate.

Darwin turned to his colleague Alfred Russel Wallace for help in answering this question. Wallace had published a paper on natural selection before Darwin did. Wallace made many of the same observations on his visits to the Malay Archipelago that Darwin made in the Galapagos Islands. Some science historians have suggested that Darwin "borrowed" ideas from Wallace for his On the Origin of Species, and that Wallace should have received some of the fame that went to Darwin.

It was Wallace, with the help of experiments completed by John Jenner Weir, who proposed that the caterpillars that had evolved bright colors were the same ones that had evolved a bad taste to birds. The bright color was a warning to their predators, helping them remember which caterpillars tasted bad. Fitting in perfectly with this theory was the fact that caterpillar species that evolved camouflage coloring were the ones that tasted good to the birds (when they could find them!).

This concept of warning coloration developed by Darwin's associates is known as aposematism.

Green Nuclear

In honor of the Climate Change Summit going on now in Copenhagen, I decided to revisit one of my previous posts about the possibility of nuclear energy being part of the climate change solution. (The photo above is actually from Belgium, but it was too funny to pass up.)

As promised in my previous post, I did some more research on this topic. Rather than bore you with a list of the various "well known" environmentalists who have now decided that nuclear power is a lesser evil than global warming, I'll just cut right to the rock star - even Al Gore has decided to tolerate nukes. Below is a quote from a 2006 speech by Gore at New York University. He doesn't talk about nukes much, probably because he feels his base is ambivalent about the topic. I have highlighted a few spots that I want to dig into a little more.

While I am not opposed to nuclear power and expect to see some modest increased use of nuclear reactors, I doubt that they will play a significant role in most countries as a new source of electricity.

The main reason for my skepticism about nuclear power playing a much larger role in the world's energy future is not the problem of waste disposal or the danger of reactor operator error, or the vulnerability to terrorist attack. Let's assume for the moment that all three of these problems can be solved.

That still leaves two serious issues that are more difficult constraints. The first is economics; the current generation of reactors is expensive, take a long time to build, and only come in one size - extra large. In a time of great uncertainty over energy prices, utilities must count on great uncertainty in electricity demand - and that uncertainty causes them to strongly prefer smaller incremental additions to their generating capacity that are each less expensive and quicker to build than are large 1000 megawatt light water reactors. Newer, more scalable and affordable reactor designs may eventually become available, but not soon.

Secondly, if the world as a whole chose nuclear power as the option of choice to replace coal-fired generating plants, we would face a dramatic increase in the likelihood of nuclear weapons proliferation. During my 8 years in the White House, every nuclear weapons proliferation issue we dealt with was connected to a nuclear reactor program. Today, the dangerous weapons programs in both Iran and North Korea are linked to their civilian reactor programs. Moreover, proposals to separate the ownership of reactors from the ownership of the fuel supply process have met with stiff resistance from developing countries who want reactors.

As a result of all these problems, I believe that nuclear reactors will only play a limited role.

As Gore points out, the first three problems are easier to solve, and we were close enough to solutions in 2006 that he did not feel these were the main issues (waste disposal, operator error and terrorist attack). The solutions we have today for these problems are even better.

As far as the cost of building nuclear power plants, this is more than offset in the long run by the relatively low cost of the fuel. The problem is coming up with the money to build plants in the first place. Utility companies do not want to risk a huge investment in an uncertain future. If smaller, "cookie cutter" plants were available, this would make nukes more economically viable.

It looks like these plants will be available sooner than Gore expected. Navy ships have used small, reproducible designs for many years. Russia is already converting these designs for civilian use, with the first scheduled to go online in 2012. A joint Japanese/American project is not far behind. Hyperion Power in Santa Fe is taking orders for 2013 delivery of their transportable nuclear plant. NuScale Power plans on having their first small plants up and running by 2016. Babcock & Wilcox, longtime manufacturers of nuclear power plants for the US Navy, recently announced they would be entering the microreactor race.

When discussing the cost of a power system, it is important to include costs that are shifted to other sectors of the economy. As long as utility companies are not held accountable for the deaths, illnesses and climate change caused by their waste products, fossil fuel receives an unjustified cost advantage.

A study published in Risk Analysis found that for every Terawatt Hour (TWh) of electricity produced, using coal for fuel results in 138 Years of Life Lost in the general population. Using nuclear fuel results in only 25 Years of Life Lost. The only better technology from this standpoint is wind, with only 3 Years of Life Lost. Unfortunately, wind has limited potential due to the huge expanses of windy terrain that must be covered with wind turbines in order to generate the amount of electricity needed by modern society.

Looking at greenhouse gas emissions, the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency found that coal produces 264 to 357 grams of "carbon equivalent" per Kilowatt Hour (KWh) of electricity produced, versus 2.5 to 5.7 grams for nuclear. No other energy source produces lower levels of greenhouse gases. This study considered emissions throughout the life of the fuel. Although nuclear power plants do not emit any greenhouse gases at all, the mining and refining of the fuel using present technology does emit greenhouse gases.

On to Gore's point about proliferation of nuclear weapons ... Pandora's Box is already open when it comes to knowledge of nuclear physics. Anyone with enough time and money can obtain a nuclear weapon. Fortunately, not many "bad actors" have acquired nuclear weapons, and none have used them.

Gore is assuming that increased political pressure, and increased controls over nuclear technology and materials, will not be able to offset the increased amount of nuclear hardware and fuel that will be available. It appears the opposite may be the case. The "Megatons to Megawatts" program has so far eliminated over 15,000 Russian and US warheads and turned them into fuel used in nuclear power plants.

The idea that Gore mentions, of establishing a centralized and safe process for handling nuclear fuel, is being pushed by recent Peace Prize recipient Barack Obama. Below is a quote from a speech of his in April 2009:

We should build a new framework for civil nuclear cooperation, including an international fuel bank, so that countries can access peaceful power without increasing the risks of proliferation.… We must harness the power of nuclear energy on behalf of our efforts to combat climate change, and to advance peace opportunity for all people.

Balancing the risks and benefits of nuclear power is not easy. But I believe that the seriousness of global warming, along with improvements in nuclear safety over the past several years, will make nuclear energy a critical part of our future.