HISTORY IN
     THE COUNTY OF
          SAN LUIS OBISPO
  Site  by Lynne Landwehr © 2004
      www.historyinslocounty.org

Features and Information:
      Mission Projects: 
            Mission San Luis Obispo:

Chorisia Tree

      You may use the photo on this page in your 4th grade mission project, but please mention this website and cite the photographer (Lynne Landwehr). Thank you.   

     Visitors to Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa often ask about the beautiful, spiny-barked, flowering tree to the left of the entrance to the Mission.  Technically, this tree is known as a Chorisia speciosa.  More commonly, it is called a "Pink Silk-Floss Tree."  The following information was taken from a plaque at the Huntington Library, Museum and Gardens in San Marino, California:

     The pink silk-floss tree, a native of southern Brazil and neighboring Argentina, is valued in tropical and subtropical gardens for its showy flowers, which appear after the leaves have fallen in autumn. Its spiny swollen green trunk presumably stores water to help it survive periods of drought.  A member of the kapok, or bombax, family, it bears large, pear-shaped or cylindrical fruits containing seeds surrounded by silky fibers which act as "parachutes" to help disperse the seeds.  These fibers are used for stuffing pillows and cushions.  The tree's pink flowers and more slender trunk distinguish this species from its white-flowered relative, Chorisia insignis.

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Copyright © 2004 Lynne Landwehr.  
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