Skip to content

Your account

With an account, your progress (modules read, XP, badges, cards, notebook, pack, challenges) follows you on every device. Without one, it stays in this browser.

or
Harmless💊 Medicinal

🌿 Cecropia (pumpwood, embauba)

Cecropia peltata · Urticacées

🌴 Tropical
🧠 To remember it“Star-shaped leaf, hollow trunk, ants inside” — cecropia is the first tree to grow back in a clearing, and it houses its own bodyguards.
Cecropia (pumpwood, embauba) — Cecropia peltata

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Very common pioneer tree in clearings and rainforest edges of Central America and the Caribbean, recognizable by its large star-shaped leaves (peltate, attached at the center like an umbrella) and its hollow trunk often colonized by ants that protect the tree in exchange for shelter and sugary secretions.

  1. large star-shaped leaves with 7-11 deep lobes, attached at the center of the blade (peltate leaf) like a parasol
  2. hollow trunk, segmented into nodes like bamboo, often inhabited by symbiotic ants
  3. whitish and downy underside of the leaves, contrasting with the green upper side
  4. rapid growth typical of pioneer species colonizing clearings
Size10-20 m
Floweringinconspicuous, fruiting in long digitate spikes resembling miniature banana fingers
Habitatclearings, edges, and riverbanks of tropical rainforests in Central America and the Caribbean, one of the first species to colonize bare soil

⚠️ Not to be confused with

No known dangerous confusion (—)aucun

To tell them apart: the large peltate star-shaped leaves (attached at the center) and the segmented hollow trunk are unique to the Cecropia genus among clearing pioneer trees; beware, however, of the often aggressive ants living inside the hollow trunk

💊 Healing with it

feuilles et écorce interne séchées utilisées en tisane traditionnelle contre l'hypertension, l'asthme, les troubles rénaux et comme anti-inflammatoire dans toute l'Amazonie et les Caraïbes

Level of evidence : traditional use — Rain-Tree Tropical Plant Database — Embauba (Cecropia)

⚠️ may lower blood pressure; avoid self-medication in people already taking hypotensive or anticoagulant treatments due to lack of data on interactions

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • lightweight wood used for crafts and formerly for starting fire by friction
  • the ants living in the hollow trunk are sometimes used as a navigational landmark by forest guides, as their nest marks a very recognizable tree
Sources (2)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.