Oct 19, 2010: Cannonball Tree

[xoxoxoBruce]

Unlike that big Redwood, this baby can fight back, take you out by dropping a "cannonball" on you.

It is the case with a number of plants that they are given popular names which reflect how they look or what they do. So it is with the Cannonball Tree whose fruit is so large that they look like cannonballs. Not only that, when they fall to the ground a large noise is created similar to... you guessed it.

So you will not find a Cannonball Tree near a public pathway or a road. One of these fruit, weighing in at several pounds and often up to ten inches in diameter could kill you. So, you really want to avoid standing directly under them when they are in fruit.

Umm, duh.

The tree (scientific name Couroupita guianensis is native to the south of the Caribbean and to the northern parts of South America. Yet it has also been growing in India for at least two to three thousand years and the jury is out whether it is native there or somehow the trees were transported across the continents several thousand years ago.

Obviously they were propagated in several places... by space aliens.

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