The Sinclair Cannonball Tree

Its flowers grow straight out of the trunk, and so, eventually, does fruit the size of cannonballs. Couroupita guianensis is native to the rainforests of Guiana, and on the UH Manoa campus, tucked between Bachman Hall and Sinclair Library near the visitor parking kiosk, one specimen has grown a trunk 314 centimetres round with the species' strange, tangled flower stems still running down its bark. The flowers themselves are large, fragrant and short-lived, which is presumably why UH's own news office photographed one in bloom for its January 2025 'Image of the Week'. The fruit that follows is genuinely cannonball-sized, round and hard-shelled, and it drops rather than clings, so anyone standing directly underneath should keep half an eye up. No age is recorded for this tree anywhere UH has published. A widely repeated claim online says it was planted in 1933 by the playwright Thornton Wilder during a stint teaching at the university; it could not be independently confirmed this pass, so it is left out rather than repeated on faith. Free to see, on open campus ground, a short walk from Sinclair Library.