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 to know them as ‘bu hubab’, meaning “having many seeds” in Arabic. And hence the common name ‘baobab’
Source: Watson, 2007
