These trees have teeth!

Many municipal plantings around here include some of these bizarre Silk Floss trees (Chorisia Speciosa according to Wiki) with their strange combination of bulbous, spiky trunks and large, delicate, lily-like flowers. Their bark is like rose thorns on steroids!

The locals have a great name for them, “palos borrachos”, which literally means "drunken sticks". I wouldn’t want anyone even remotely drunken near me wielding a stick like that!

They’re not in bloom yet, but they are truly spectacular when they are (assuming the wind doesn’t rip their delicate flowers to shreds) and I shall doubtless be posting a more comprehensive - and hopefully more beautiful - blip of them then…