Red silk cotton tree

No photos taken today as I did most of the driving back home from Florida..about 7 hours.  I fudged on the rules and created a collage of my favorite flower from my trip to Florida.  This was the red silk cotton tree (bombax ceiba) found at Selby Botanical Gardens and we also saw it growing on a street corner in Bradenton.   It was glorious against the blue sky!   It stays green until the spring when the flowers appear and they are large..about as big as my hand..maybe 6-8 inches across from petal to petal.  The pod at the end of the petal opens up as it dies and it is white fuzz, like cotton bolls, so that is how the common name started.  

I have about 300 photos that I just uploaded so it may be that tomorrow I will be making another collage..but then again..I saw a few spring arrivals that happened in my yard while I was gone!!