Cannonball Tree

Couroupita guianensis

“Flowers erupt directly from the trunk. Fruit weighs 5 pounds. Sacred in India.”

The flowers don't grow on the branches — they erupt on long rope-like stalks directly from the main trunk, in clusters of waxy pink, orange, and yellow blooms with a complex structure found nowhere else. The fruit that follows is a large, hard, brown sphere — a cannonball, exactly. Sacred to Shiva in Hindu tradition. Zone 10–11 in the ground, container-worthy in Zone 9. The fragrance is extraordinary. The structure is impossible.