Kapok Tree in N. Florida?

[D Palm]

A local garden center has a few Kapok trees. I know they get very large, but will they grow in an environment that receives mid to low 20’s? 
I would hate to have this massive tree in 30 years and we hit a crazy 18-19 degree low and it die.

The tree was slick, with a green trunk labeled “kapok.” I asked an associate if it would live here and she replied “once established, yes.” 

[Silas_Sancona]

3 hours ago, D Palm said:

A local garden center has a few Kapok trees. I know they get very large, but will they grow in an environment that receives mid to low 20’s? 
I would hate to have this massive tree in 30 years and we hit a crazy 18-19 degree low and it die.

The tree was slick, with a green trunk labeled “kapok.” I asked an associate if it would live here and she replied “once established, yes.” 

Picture(s)?  Based on description, the "slick green trunk" sounds like Floss Silk Tree, Ceiba speciosa, rather than the real deal, C. pentandra.  Yes, many Floss Silks can have the spiky studs on the trunks, but, there are specimens ..seen here and in CA, where the trunks are essentially smooth..  Really stands out in a landscape or nursery.  Thinking the trunk on pentandra tends to be more brownish than green ..no worries if i'm wrong on that.

Floss silk are fairly tough once bigger.. There are specimens in Tucson which have survived occasional, -but common enough- exposure to the lower 20s w/ just some minor damage. Didn't kill the trees anyway.. Same idea back on a few planted back home in San Jose..

Can't remember what the lower damage limit for the real Kapok is off the top of my head, but think it is a little higher ( ...more cold sensitive ) than Floss Silk, ..or even the commonly planted, White flowered Ceiba species, C. insignis  ( ..or C. chodatii, which can be confused w/ insignis  ) which are fairly tough as well ( once they have some wood on them )

[D Palm]

They had spiky trunked trees labeled Silk Floss, but those are gone now. I’ll take a photo of the kapok when I visit again. I do remember seeing smooth green trunked trees when I lived in San Diego back in ‘07. 

[Navarro]

Eric en Orlando te puede orientar  ,los cultiva en leu garden y creo recordar que sufrieron daños en varios inviernos 

[richtrav]

It does sound like one of the Chorisia types of Ceiba. Glen Saint Mary is almost on the Georgia border, that will be pushing it, but the hardiest chodatii or speciosa might be doable for a while on a warm south or east wall in town with as little frost as possible. Eventually it will be badly damaged. Even pure chodatii will burn back in the mid-20s and quite a bit in the low 20s especially east of the Rockies, and the more water it gets in winter the more susceptible it will be to cold damage.

Here in deep South Texas they have to be kept bone dry in winter and away from a direct exposure to the north wind or they can suffer severe damage in the low 20s. Kingsville is the farthest north I’ve seen a chodatii take the upper teens briefly without being horribly mutilated after Feb ‘21 and it was on the east/southeast side of a one-story church - in town. There might be some left in Corpus or Laredo in favorable locations. Brownsville was a hair warmer in ‘21 than the rest of the Valley and it seemed to make a difference, you rarely see badly damaged ones there. 

They’re great ornamental flowering trees for here but you have to site them correctly and let them go as dormant as possible in winter. At the southern end of their range in Argentina chodatii only grows on slopes or hills and avoids low frost pockets, and even then they’ll occasionally show some cold damage. Speciosa (the Argentine forms at least) seem to have a similar hardiness, maybe they can’t go quite as dormant as chodatii in winter. There appear to be intergrades where both species are used.

This is a speciosa in my yard in May 2021, after seeing 3 hours around 23F (-5C) in February. It was kept very dry going into winter.