Malabulak
Bombax ceiba · Red silk-cotton tree
- Names in the book
- Taglinaw, Bobuy gubat, Tag.; Talutu, Vis.
- Used for
- Diarrhea and dysentery
- Colours
- flowerred
- Native range
- Tropical Asia to northern Australia
- In the Philippines, per the book
- Angat, Iloilo. Blooms in February.
- Family
- Malvaceae, filed in the book under Malvaceæ
- Printed as
- Bombax malabaricum, DC. (B. Ceiba, Blanco.)
- Sources
- Page 50 on Project Gutenberg · Wikipedia
The plant today
Bombax ceiba, like other trees of the genus Bombax, is commonly known as cotton tree. More specifically, it is sometimes known as Malabar silk-cotton tree; red silk-cotton; red cotton tree; or ambiguously as silk-cotton or kapok, both of which may also refer to Ceiba pentandra. This Asian tropical tree has a straight tall trunk and its leaves are deciduous in winter. Red flowers with 5 petals appear in the spring before the new foliage. It produces a capsule which, when ripe, contains white fibres like cotton. Its trunk bears spikes to deter attacks by animals.
Excerpt from “Bombax ceiba” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Recorded in the Philippines
GBIF holds 27 records of this plant from the Philippines. The ones with map coordinates fall in 4 provinces: Laguna (4), Rizal (4), Bulacan (1), La Union (1).
Counts from GBIF occurrence records, October 2026. They include planted trees and garden plants, and a province with no records may only lack collectors.
What the 1901 book says
A historical record, quoted as printed. Doses and remedies here are not medical advice.
Uses
In India the roots are used to obtain an astringent and alterative effect and form part of a well-known aphrodisiac mixture called Musla-Samul. If the trunk is incised, an astringent gum exudes and this they use in diarrhœa, dysentery and menorrhagia. Dose of the gum 2½–3 grams.
Botanical description
A large tree covered with sharp, conical and tough spines. Leaves alternate, compound, digitate, caducous; leaflets 5–7 with long common petiole. Flowers solitary or in axillary cymes, hermaphrodite, regular. Calyx gamosepalous, cup-shaped, with 5 acute lobules. Corolla violet, with 5 deep clefts; æstivation convolute. Stamens numerous, united at the base in 5 bundles, free above, bearing unilocular anthers. Ovary of 5 many-ovulate compartments, with a style ending in 5 short branches. Capsule woody, ovoid, loculicidal, with 5 valves. Seeds numerous, black, covered with cottony fibers.
Recent research
The most cited papers since 2022 that name this plant in the title, pulled from Europe PMC in October 2026. Titles are the authors' own and the findings have not been reviewed here.
- High-quality genomes of Bombax ceiba and Ceiba pentandra provide insights into the evolution of Malvaceae species and differences in their natural fiber development
- Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi contribute to reactive oxygen species homeostasis of Bombax ceiba L. under drought stress
- Single-cell RNA landscape of the special fiber initiation process in Bombax ceiba