What plant is that?
There is an abundance of these flowering trees in West Coast Park, Singapore. The flowers are surrounded by spiky branches and the fruit is a rock-hard, spherical nut-like object.
This brings up an interesting knowledge-finding issue. I tried to find the name of this plant on Google and used searches like “tropical flowering tree”, “bowling ball nut tree” and the like, but couldn’t find anything like it. I tried finding images with those descriptions, but also no joy. So how do you use online search to find a plant?
Anyway, can anyone tell me what the name of the plant is?


A pleasant carpet of flower petals:

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20 Oct 2006 at 2:17 am Link to this comment
my colleague says it’s called cannon ball. The fruit and the flower. But she can’t remember the official name.
23 Oct 2006 at 4:30 am Link to this comment
Thanks a lot. With this info, I can now find the scientific name (if anyone cares) – it’s as follows (from Encyclopedia of the Earth):
Cannon Ball Tree
Couroupita guianensis
Family: Lecythidaceae
Genus: Couroupita
Species: guianensis (gee-uh-NEN-sis)
Synonym: Couratari pedicellaris
Synonym: Lecythis bracteata
Synonym: Pekea couroupita