Kapok tree

The sacred tree of the Maya, linking the underworld, earth and sky – it grows on the squares of many Guatemalan towns.

One of the tallest trees in the tropics, growing to 50–70 m, with a straight, columnar trunk with tall buttress roots and a broad, umbrella-shaped crown. In the dry season it sheds its leaves and flowers, then produces fruits filled with silky fluff – kapok, once used to stuff mattresses and life jackets. The flowers are pollinated by bats. It grows in lowland forests and in pastures, where it is often left standing as a shade tree.

Significance in the country

In Maya cosmology the ceiba (yaxche) was the world tree, its roots reaching down to the underworld of Xibalbá and its crown up to the heavens. As the national tree it graces town squares; a famous giant specimen grows in Palín, among other places.

Where it grows

The lowlands and warm valleys of almost the whole country – from the forests of Petén and Izabal to the Pacific coast (Escuintla, Suchitepéquez, Retalhuleu) and the Motagua Valley; absent from the highest parts of the highlands.

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