Baobab

What does Baobab look like?

Baobabs are deciduous trees reaching heights between five and thirty metres. Mature specimens develop immense, bottle-shaped or cylindrical trunks made of fibrous wood capable of holding vast quantities of water during droughts. Their crowns bear compound leaves with five to eleven leaflets radiating like fingers. At dusk, the tree produces solitary or paired blossoms on reproductive branches. These large, richly perfumed flowers open with astonishing speed, moving fast enough for an observer to see them uncurl. The calyx splits into five segments that roll backward, revealing velvety inner surfaces tinted cream, pink, or red. Inside, petals in shades of white, cream, vibrant yellow, or dark red surround a central pillar of fused stamen stalks. From this tube, numerous free stamens and a slender style emerge.

Where does Baobab come from?

The genus traces its deepest roots to Madagascar, where six of the eight known species still grow wild. Another species spans mainland Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, while one occurs in northwestern Australia. In centuries past, humans and trade carried African baobabs across the Indian Ocean to south Asia, and later to Cape Verde and the Caribbean island of Barbados. Arab voyager Ibn Battuta recorded some of the earliest written accounts of the tree in the fourteenth century. In 1592, Italian physician Prospero Alpini described Egyptian specimens of the fruit under the name Bahobab, possibly drawn from an Arabic term meaning many-seeded fruit. Later in Senegal, French explorer Michel Adanson produced the first thorough botanical description, leading Carl Linnaeus to name the genus Adansonia in his honor.

When and how Baobab blooms

Baobab blossoms function on a fleeting nocturnal schedule. Buds burst open around twilight in an active unfurling that can be seen directly. The flowers release a powerful perfume to attract bats, their primary nighttime pollinators. Although the petals may hang on the branch for several days, the flower remains fertile for only fifteen hours. By the following morning, the female receptive surfaces have shriveled, and the pollen has already dropped. After successful pollination, woody, berry-like fruit develops with a hard outer shell. These egg-shaped pods hold kidney-shaped seeds embedded in dry pulp. In most varieties, the shell stays shut even after falling, though one Australian kind cracks open upon hitting the ground.

How Baobab is used

Communities across Africa and Australia value baobabs for nourishment and practical survival. The tender foliage is harvested and cooked as a green leafy vegetable. Inside the woody fruit, the pale, chalky pulp delivers a tart, citrusy punch reminiscent of sherbet, offering abundant vitamin C, phosphorus, and potassium. In places like Sudan, where the tree is called gongolaze, people prepare the pulp for food and traditional health remedies. Local populations also hollow out living trunks or tap their fibrous interiors to store thousands of litres of drinking water during dry seasons. In the wild, birds such as weavers and mottled spinetails rely on the massive branches for nesting.

Kinds of Baobab

Botanists split the eight baobab species into three main groups. The African baobab, Adansonia digitata, stands alone in its section because its flowers and pods hang down on long stalks, and it possesses four sets of chromosomes rather than two. In Madagascar, Adansonia grandidieri and Adansonia suarezensis form a group with shorter, thicker buds and brown outer calyx lobes. The remaining species, including the small Australian Adansonia gregorii and the limestone-loving Adansonia rubrostipa, bear elongated buds that are at least five times longer than wide.

What Baobab means

Because their thick, bare branches resemble exposed root systems in the dry season, baobabs earned the nickname upside down tree. They rank among the longest-living flowering plants on Earth. Radiocarbon testing confirmed that the Panke baobab of Zimbabwe lived for roughly 2,450 years before collapsing in 2011. Other venerable giants, such as South Africa's Glencoe and Sunland trees and Madagascar's Grandmother tree, developed multi-stemmed trunks with circumferences exceeding thirty metres. In recent decades, many of the oldest African specimens have died unexpectedly, an alarming loss linked to severe drought and rising temperatures.

Where Baobab is used and seen

Jardin botanique de DeshaiesA 7-hectare botanical garden in Deshaies, Guadeloupe with global plant collectionsGardens by the BaySingapore’s waterfront gardens with giant Supertrees and world-class glasshouses

Questions people ask about Baobab

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle
• IUCN Red List of Threatened SpeciesIUCN Red List, Article
• USDA Plants DatabaseUS Department of Agriculture, Article
• Plants of the World OnlineRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Plant database
• Where it has been recordedGBIF, Plant database
• Sightings and photos by naturalistsiNaturalist, Plant database

• Adansonia on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos
• Wikidata recordOpen data