It rises nearly 50 metres above the largest tropical forest in the world. Among the Wayana of French Guiana, the spirit of a warrior turned eagle still lives at its top. To follow the kapok tree, from the ground to the heights of the canopy, is to discover a forest woven of interdependencies, which is much more than a forest.
The Amazon rainforest covers nearly a third of South America and is home to more than 80,000 plant species.
According to a Wayana legend, the tallest of the kapok trees bore a nest of giant eagles; two warriors set out to capture an eaglet, but one took the ladder away from the other.The Wayana tell that a warrior, abandoned at the top of the tallest of the kapok trees, was changed there into an eagle and received from the animals the knowledge of the forest, which he brought back to his people: how to heal with plants, build a house, shape a bow. For the craftsman Aimawale Opoya, it is the most beautiful tree in the world. Before taking a piece of its wood, one must ask its permission and connect one’s spirit to its own. In the soft wood of the buttresses, he carves a ciel de case roof disc, an art inherited from his grandfather and a tradition that is dying out: its motifs tell the story of his people and the magical animals of the forest, and keep evil spirits and diseases away from the village.
For the Wayana, the kapok tree symbolises the spiritual alliance between people and the forest: a tree “that deserves our respect”.
The motifs of a ciel de case also express the Wayana’s attachment to the land, the water and the sky.
Many have “lost this notion of listening to the earth”; yet “what matters is life, and the forest is life”.In its early years, this titan grew nearly 4 metres a year in its race towards the light. Its crown, 25 metres wide, hosts a whole procession of plants, and its trunk serves hundreds of species as a lift to the sky. In the heart of the bromeliads clinging to the branches, reservoirs of rainwater, the botanist Céline Leroy discovers “mini-worlds” where larvae break down dead leaves and feed the plant that shelters them. When the rains flood the forest, the ecologist Sandra Correa follows fruit-eating fish, cousins of the piranhas, which carry off the seeds: up to half of the tree species that bear fruit during the floods are, in some cases, dispersed by them. The myrmecologist Jérôme Orivel, for his part, observes the cecropia, which houses and feeds a colony of ants ready to defend it. “Everything we observe today is the result of interactions.”
For Céline Leroy, a researcher at the IRD, the bromeliad feeds through its funnel-shaped leaves; its roots serve only to anchor it to the tree.
In places, up to 6 metres of rain fall each year: weighing several hundred tonnes, the kapok tree moors itself to the ground with buttresses 8 metres high.
Swallowed whole, the seeds pass intact through the fish’s digestive tract; in the Amazon, between 120 and 150 species of fish feed on fruit.
A recent discovery: inside the stem, a fungus recycles the ants’ corpses and waste, and returns their nutrients to the cecropia.Resting on very poor soil, the forest tirelessly recycles whatever falls at its feet. The biologist Laëtitia Brechet measures its exchanges with the atmosphere: today it stores 100 billion tonnes of carbon, more than it emits, and no one knows how it will react to global change. Exposed to lightning and the elements, the kapok tree too will meet its end. But it is above all deforestation that is eating away at the forest: since the 1970s, a quarter of the Amazon has been turned into furniture, pasture or fields. Representing the Palikur people at COICA, Claudette Labonté fights against gold mining and land grabbing, alongside other Indigenous peoples. “It’s clear that the house, it’s burning.” This fight, she says, belongs to “all of us who live here”. Perhaps inhabiting the Earth begins like this: placing a hand on a tree, to listen to what is going on.
Longer droughts, very wet spells: extremes are multiplying, and in places, at worst, the forest could turn into savannah.
Heat and humidity speed up decomposition: the trees take up nutrients as soon as they are released, including those from their neighbours’ leaves.
In the Amazon, 19 trees fall every second; COICA has secured commitments from governments to protect 80% of it by 2025.“We live in the forest, but the forest does not need us to live.”Aimawale Opoya’s grandfather
“L’arbre qui cache la forêt is fascinating. […] The series goes beyond the trees themselves and the forests it depicts, to remind us of the complexity and importance of these ecosystems.”Mònica Planas Callol, Ara (Barcelona)translated from Catalan · July 2026
“Sumptuous images, a dreamlike voice-over, a hypnotic soundtrack […]. Beneath the trees, we marvel at the intertwining of the infinitely small and the infinitely large. […] By celebrating the majesty of the setting, L’arbre qui cache la forêt urges us to preserve it.”Ouest-FranceJune 2024