Baobab
The baobab tree is Africa’s most distinctive tree – it is mythical and can live to be very old.
Baobab is characteristic of the warm, arid savannahs of Africa. These fantastic trees can be more than 1500 years old, 25 m high and have a trunk diameter of 14 m.
The thick trunk store water which the tree need to survive the dry season. Baobabs shed their leaves in the dry season and are often called ‘upside down trees’ as the leafless branches resemble roots reaching for the sky.
Because of the tree’s age and distinctive appearance, many myths are associated with it in Africa. The most common is perhaps the one in which the devil uprooted the tree and thrust it back into the ground upside down—with its roots in the air—hence its nickname, “The Devil’s Tree.”
The tree’s flowers are large and white. They open in the late afternoon and only last a single night. Fruit bats and bush babies (small nocturnal primates) pollinate the flowers.
The fruits are eaten by a variety of animals e.g. baboons, black rhinoceroses and elephants. The animals disperse the seeds over a wide area. The seeds have a tough shell that can survive the animal’s digestive tract – in fact, they germinate better after such a journey.
It turns out that more and more of the oldest baobab trees in southern Africa have begun to die — or “collapse,” as it is called. Researchers have concluded that the cause is not the more frequent droughts in Africa, as the tree is built to withstand those, but rather the overall rise in temperature due to global warming.
Fact box:
- Greenhouse location: Tropican house
- Danish name: Baobab
- Latin name: Adansonia digitata
- Family: Mallow family / Malvaceae
- Natural habitat: Africa