The Venda believe that if you wash a baby in water infused with baobab bark, the child will become fat and healthy
Famous Baobabs: Chapman's Baobab
This well-known tree has many documented references to it in the journals of early travellers and foreign explorers to the region, many of whom left inscriptions on its massive trunk which can still be seen today. The tree even served as an unofficial post office for these 19th-century explorers.
Dung Beetles and Baobabs
Baobab seeds are relatively large,but it’s not an impossibility that that germinating Baobab seedlings could use the manure buried by dung beetles to boost the growth of its first few shoots!
Famous Baobabs: A Champion of Trees – The Sagole Baobab
Champion trees are nationally listed individual trees which are exceptional examples of their species because of their enormous size, great age, rarity or historical significance. One of the South African champion trees is the Sagole Baobab Tree, located in Vendaland, Limpopo Province, with a trunk diameter of 10.47 metres. It may not be the stoutest of baobab trees (The Sunland and […] Continue Reading
Beautiful Baobabs in Africa
The reason EcoProducts exists is to celebrate the Baobab tree – not only for its many gifts – but also simply because it’s beautiful. We’ve found some gorgeous images of Baobab Trees to share with you.
It's been a good year – baobab harvesters
The area where baobabs are found is usually very arid and the climate not easy to grow crops in. Many of the harvesters with whom I work have fields around their villages where they do dry-land cropping for food and to supplement income. Dry-land cropping means that there is no irrigated water to the fields and they have to rely […] Continue Reading
2014 Mar: Baobab seedling in the wild – will it survive?
I always get excited when I see baobab seedlings emerging from the earth near or under the baobab trees. It shows that the seeds are viable and that the weather was perfect. Unfortunately their survival is very slim because of the harsh climate they need to survive in and because they are simply too delicious for a goat to ignore. […] Continue Reading
Local headman and I chat about baobabs
One of the wonderful things about my job is that it is so varied, from production, to resource monitoring to community friendships. Our relationship with the harvesters starts with the headman in each village. I have had a relationship with some of the village headmen for over 10 years now. I always love visiting them and we always end […] Continue Reading
Ecoproducts and Esse support rural crèche
One of the villages where some of our harvesters live has a little crèche which is so needed while mothers go out to work. Yet they have so very little in the way of even basic resources for busy, active, growing little children. Recently on one of my monitoring trips, I was able to take some chairs and tables to the little […] Continue Reading
2014 Mar: Baobab seedlings get big ideas!
In November last year EcoProducts did a workshop with 50 rural women harvesters in how to grow and conserve baobabs. Each woman was given a seed and a planting bag to take home. Well, when I visited the village this week, some of the women took me to see their so- called seedlings. They had successfully germinated and had grown […] Continue Reading