From the kitchen window, over the wall behind the apartments we saw green globes hanging on a bare tree. What could they be?

At Uxmal the guide pointed out a ceiba tree that was sacred to the Maya people who called it the Tree of Life. Wikipidea tells us "The tree figures in the mythologies of pre-ColumbianMesoamerican cultures, in particular that of the Maya civilization, where the concept of the central world tree is often depicted as a ceiba trunk, which connects the planes of the Underworld (Xibalba), the skies and the terrestrial realm." http://www.answers.com/topic/ceiba
Gerhard tries to remember how many levels there are in the underworld and the upper realms, but my imagination was piqued when the guide said that the fruit produced a fiber called kapok.
We went to the hardware store that now owns the property where that strange tree grows and asked permission to observe it up close. We found that it has a very spikey trunk! The employee who showed us around was Mayan, so he knew other interesting information and legends.

The best-known, and most widely cultivated, species is Kapok, Ceiba pentandra.
Kapoks are drought deciduous. This means they shed most or all of their leaves during the tropical dry season. The dry season occurs during the northern hemisphere winter. The brown seeds are round like peas and are found in pods. The pods are woody, smooth and pendulous, with a light green color. They will burst open while still on the tree after the leaves have fallen. (This is how the tree looks now, the first of April.)
Inside a whitish cotton like fiber surrounds the brown seeds. These are born away on the wind. http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/kapok.htm
During the past month, we observed little round clumps of fiber on the lawn at the apartments and saw that they catch the drops of water from the sprinklers. At first we thought it was some kind of insect infestation, like woolly aphids, but when we picked up a clump, there was a black seed in the middle. Recently, while we were waiting for a taxi, a whirlwind carried many clumps over the walls and buildings on the other side of the street.
Curiosity needed to be satisfied, so I also investigated kapok fiber.

Kapok is natural vegetable based fiber obtained from the seed capsules of trees grown in Java, Sumatra, and central America. The fiber is also known as silk cotton because of its natural luster similar to that of pure silk.
Kapok looks similar to cotton but can be easily distinguished from it when tested under a microscope. The fiber appears like a hollow tube with very thin walls and frequent folds.

Kapok possesses the following properties that make it useful for manufacturing different products:

• Light, Very Buoyant, Resilient, Highly Flammable, Vermin Resistant, Moisture Resistant
• Dries Quickly, Smooth

Kapok has a smooth texture, but because of being weak, it is not spun into yarn. The fiber is mostly used for manufacturing mattress, cushions, upholstered furniture, pillows, life jackets etc. The fiber is also used for sound proofing and insulation.
http://www.textilefurnishings.com/kapok-fiber.html

Just as a sidenote, the property used to belong to the Church, but was sold. Most of the big trees on the site were there when the Church school and chapel were being used. The buildings were torn down when the Temple was built, but the trees remain.
When the wind blows, the seed pods on these trees make a sound like rain falling.
This is a roble: the leaves stay green all year and the roots go below the hard limestone layer to find water.
Ripe coconuts--why pick them?-- they are all around us.
Imagine, mangos in the backyard!