As part of EcoProducts commitment to understanding the ecology and sustainable harvesting of baobab fruit, Dr Sarah Venter monitors a representative set of trees every March. The trees are scattered between various landscapes, including villages, fields, rocky outcrops and bush. Following the patterns of fruit production between landscapes and over multiple years, gives Sarah insight into the natural variability […] Continue Reading
It is baobab flowering time again giving us the chance to continue our research into the ecology and pollination of the baobab flower.
How are baobab flowers pollinated? It’s still a subject for considerable research and Nisa Karimi has been studying baobab flower pollination in the Limpopo area.
Skelmwater is a bare stony hillside dotted with baobab trees, but this has become a special place for Sarah Venter and Diana Mayne. The baobab trees here are each numbered and painted with a neat stripe around their girth. The girth of these trees has been measured since 1931. Diana and Sarah discovered this plot in 2002 when they first went to visit it and found that the measurements had been forgotten and no one was measuring them any more.
Every year in February or March, I go out with a small team to do baobab fruit monitoring. This is our 10th year! It’s is a good time of year to do this because while most of the fruit have reached their full size, they have not matured (dried out) enough and have not yet fallen off the trees. We count the […] Continue Reading