Baobab: is there some wondrous special quality which comes from eating the fruit borne by such very ancient trees.
Measuring Baobab girth
It feels a bit like when you mark off the height of your children on the doorpost, but every year in May Diana Mayne, a baobab colleague, and I visit Skelmwater Baobab research plot to do annual growth measurements. This research plot was started in 1931 to measure the annual diameter growth of baobabs. This year was the 83rd measurement and most […] Continue Reading
Miracle Tree!
A few years ago I was called by a local farmer to see some baobabs that were very ill and dying. There was a group of four baobabs, some of them were still standing and others had already collapsed in to a heap of fibre. This tree was still standing, but was hot and ‘sweaty’ with droplets on its bark, almost as […] Continue Reading
Monitoring with baobab harvesters
Last week I did my annual baobab fruit monitoring trip where I gather research information on a spcecific population of 40 baobab trees. This year I am looking at how much fruit each tree produces each year and how that varies from season to season and between land use types. Usually I have a field assistant whom I hire from the village, but […] Continue Reading
Where did that baobab come from?
There are 8 different species of Baobab trees 6 of which are native to Madagascar, one in Africa and one in Australia. There’s a lot of controversy about where the Baobab tree originated as it’s often been assumed that Madagascar is the centre of origin because it has the most different species. This implies that Adansonia digitata migrated from Madagascar […] Continue Reading
What's in a name: Adansonia digitata
The latin name, Adansonia digitata, was given to the baobab by Carl Linneaus. He named the baobab after the a French naturalist Michel Adanson. Adanson was posted to Senegal in 1749 to research the natural resources of the area. He was blown away by his first sight of a baobab describing it as "a forest in itself”. This description of […] Continue Reading
What's in a name: baobab
Across Africa baobabs are known by many different names and we know that the fruit have been used for thousands of years. However, the first detailed botanical descriptions were made by Prospero Alpini, a 16th Century physician and botanist living in Venice who spent three years in Cairo. He first saw the fruit being sold in the Cairo Souks and came […] Continue Reading
The real truth about water in baobab trees
There’s a bit of a myth out there that you can tap water out of a baobab which is illustrated by this delightful cartoon. The truth is that a freshly felled baobab trunk weighs about 850kg per cubic meter. Once dried out, it weighs 200kg per cubic meter. This means that baobabs are able to store 650 litres of […] Continue Reading
Encounters with a family tree
When I was visiting friends in Cordoba, Argentina recently I came across this tree that looked so much like a baobab that I thought it must be some relation. When I looked it up, I found it was indeed part of the same family as the Baobab Malvaceae. Its scientific name is Ceiba speciosa commonly known as palo borracho which […] Continue Reading
Brief Beauty
In contrast to the solid bulkiness of the tree, the Baobab’s flowers are delicate and fragile looking. The pendulous white flowers, centred with a soft brush of bright yellow pollen, bloom for just 24 hours before falling gracefully to the ground. The waxy white flowers appear in spring or early summer. The buds start to open in the late afternoon, […] Continue Reading