The Baobab Tree
I like trees – call me weird. But they are some of natures great architectures. Tall, short, smooth, rough, simple or complex there is a tree for you. Unless you’re tree-racist. But guys, before you cut down a tree spare a little thought for the seed that could and grew into the tree before you. After all trees are people too.
Todays tree is one of the weirdest trees you will ever see. Perhaps. It is the Adansonia or the Baobab tree. But one of the best names is “the upside-down tree” as it really does resemble a tree that has berried it’s head in the sand and it’s roots are pointing upward at the top of it’s rather rotund trunk.
Now for the science bit. Coz you’re worth it:
Baobabs store water in those there swollen trunks of theirs (up to 120,000 litres (32,000 US gal) to endure the harsh droughts). Which by the way is why in Madagascar at the “Avenue of Baobabs” They stand like an orchard above sparse bushes and grasses with little to no other trees around them. As they store so much water in their trunks that they make very bad fire wood. And at one point they would have been in a rainforest. Until man needed firewood and gradually felled all their neighbours, leaving only them. Sad but true. Monkey bread.
Some Baobabs are thought to be THOUSANDS of years old, but when someone wanted to cut one down to check, they found that the wood doesn’t produce annual growth rings.
The baobab bar:
The Prison Baobab:
Reportedly used as a prison cell for convicts being transported to Derby for sentencing.
