The flower of the Sea Poison Tree

While staying at Mirissa I'd rise with the dawn and then walk a hundred yards down to the beach to enjoy the coolest part of the day, have a swim and then eat some breakfast. Each morning I noticed these amazing flowers, which are probably six inches in diameter, littering the top of the beach just above the waterline under the trees. I began to realise that these flowers only open in the dark of the night and somehow they completed their pollination cycle so that by dawn they were ready to fall to the ground, in this case onto the sand. Sometimes there were as many as thirty flowers close to each other on the ground.

As I''m back-blipping this some years later, I’ve spent ages tonight trying to find out more about them and have finally discovered this website which describes them as the 'Sea Poison Tree (Barringtonia asiatica)' and has illustrations.


The 'Sea Poison Tree (Barringtonia asiatica)' is a salt-tolerant landscape tree, typically 30 to 50 feet (10 to 15 m) tall and commonly associated with coastal areas, with a natural range extending from tropical Africa, through India to Southeast Asia, Australia and the Pacific.

It blooms on and off throughout the year, with large, showy, white, tulip-like flower buds that open at night to reveal their long, hair-like filaments, which are white with pink tips and collectively resemble a powder-puff when extended. The flowers are short-lived, opening for one night only, then lose their petals which fall to the ground creating litter along with the fallen leaves. The fruit are highly poisonous. The flowers are followed by four-sided, woody fruit about the size of a juvenile coconut. Green when young they mature to a dull grey-brown and like a coconut, will float and drift on the ocean until they land on new shores.

Because all parts of the tree contain saponin, which is a poison, the seeds and other parts of the plant are pounded and used to stun fish in freshwater streams.