The name ‘baobab’ is of Arabic origin: abu hibab refers to a fruit with numeous seeds. The genus name refers to the French naturalist Michel Adanson (1727-1806). Of Scottish descent, he was predominantly a botanist; and quite an adventurer: at age 22, he embarked for the West African country of Senegal (aka Mali) and spent four years in exploration, bringing back to Paris no fewer than 30,000 plants.
We now know (spring 2024), from genomic analysis, that the tree originated in Madagascar. This large island is close enough to Africa to explain its dissemination into that continent, whether the winds carried the seeds or humans were responsible for the implantation.
Where are they found in Africa? Predominantly, in low-elevation sub-Saharan savannas. Its area of growth extends from Northern Namibia and Transvaal to Ethiopia and Sudan. It is already an economic resource to countries such as Togo. It grows in the coastal plains of Ghana and Benin, and in the plains of Erythrea, Somalia, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, Tchad, Zimbabwe (surely I have forgotten to include some countries for which I beg to be forgiven),
Among plants, baobabs are the dinosaurs: they are huge in both age and size. In age: these trees live for a thousand years, recently one in Namibia was radiocarbon-dated at 1,275 years. In size: they are routinely 15-25 m (50-80 ft) in height and their trunk has a diameter of 10 m or so (35 ft).
Their size explains one of their attractiveness to the local populations, people can cluster around a single tree and hold a meeting there. This was a traditional use, children and adults would come and listen to their elders recount tales, of what they had lived through and witnessed; and, more often, folktales and mythologies. These storytellers were known in French West Africa as griots — a word that exists in France since the seventeenth century.
I have just mentioned the French language. One of France’s great writers of the past century, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, viewed the Earth from the sky. He was a pilot. At the start of his professional career, he would fly commercial aircrafts to West Africa, on the way to South
America. Sometimes, his plane broke down and he was stranded in West Africa. Which is how he got to see baobabs. His world-famous hero and thus entitled fable, Le Petit Prince, utters this comment :
Un baobab, si l’on s’y prend trop tard, on ne peut jamais plus s’en débarrasser ‘
(If you start too late, you can never get rid of a baobab.) Profound or inane?
Anyway, this calls forth the future of African baobabs. Up to now, they have each amounted to a massive storage unit of food and health-maintaining natural products. Everything or nearly everything on a tree is edible: the leaves, the flowers, the fruit pulp, the seeds, the bark.
One is reminded, hence, of a huge animal, the whale, which likewise for centuries was a natural reservoir of foods of various sorts. Accordingly, it was hunted by mankind to near-extinction. Will such a fate befall baobabs? One may legitimately be concerned: as I write, the fruit pulp is used already, after being shipped to Western Europe for manufacturing cosmetics. It is urgent, in my view, for international organizations, such as the FAO, to enter Adinsonia digitata on a list of endangered species.