How are baobab flowers pollinated? It's still a subject for considerable research and Nisa Karimi has been studying baobab flower pollination in the Limpopo area.

As some of hardiest, long-lived trees around, Baobabs know how to make the most of scarce resources, especially water. On World Water Day, when we're bringing awareness to one of our Earth's most precious resources, what lessons can we learn from Baobabs?

For the last 10 years, every February or March, I go out on a research field trip to do some baobab fruit monitoring.

I am often asked how to measure the height of a baobab. I use a clever little device called a clinometer. Read more to find out how I do it.

I have been monitoring baobab tree fruit production in Venda for 7 years. Read more How many fruit to baobab trees produce?

This week I did my annual trip to Skelmwater. This is a baobab research plot situated near Musina long the N1. Skelmwater was established in 1930 by the late Professor de Villiers of Stellenbosch University. The aim was to measure the rate of growth of baobabs in their natural environment. Despite the small number of […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 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 […]

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 […]

Baobab trees are a miracle of resilience

Measuring the girth of Baobab trees

Monitoring Baobab trees with harvesters