Mapou Tree

The mapou (silk-cotton tree, Ceiba pentandra) is sacred in Haitian Vodou as a place of ancestor presence, lwa gathering, and ritual action. The tree's vast canopy and buttressed roots mark it as a liminal space between the living and the dead. In the revolutionary archive it figures prominently because the Bois Caïman ceremony of August 1791 is traditionally located beneath a great mapou, linking the tree to the spiritual ignition of the Haitian Revolution.