Couroupita Guianensis, Cannonball Tree

The Cannonball Tree is native to the tropical forests northeastern South America, especially the Amazon Basin. The tree is planted in gardens elsewhere in the tropics such as in India and Thailand.
Flowers and pollination
Cannonball Tree flowers do not have nectar, so these flowers are mainly visited by bees in search pollen; outside the native range habitat, carpenter bees are considered to be the principal pollinators. Both the fruit and the flower grow from stalks which sprout from the trunk the tree. Cannonball Tree flowers are found on thick tangled extrusions that grow on the trunk the tree; these are found just below the foliage branches. The extrusions however, can range from two to six feet in length. The flowers are attached to an upwardly bent, white fleshy disk. The flowers have six petals, which are large, orange-red, and strongly perfumed. In pollination, fertile stamens can be found in a ring around reduced style and stamens. The sterile pollen is located in the anthers. As a bee enters to pollinate the flower, its back rubs against the ring with fertile pollen; this allows the bee to carry the fertile pollen to another flower. The differences in the pollen was noticed by French botanist Antoine Porteau in 1825. The differences in the pollen are as follows: the pollen the ring stamens is fertile, while the hood pollen is sterile.