Baobab

Botanical Name: Adansonia digitata

English : Baobab

Shona: Muuyu

Ndebele: 

 

Habitat

Occurs at low altitude, in hot dry woodland.

Description

A comparatively short but grotesquely fat tree about 10-15metres in height. The trunk in large specimens can reach about 28 metres in circumference.

 

Bark: Bark is pinkish-grey/ coppery, smooth and heavily folded.

Leaves: They alternate digitately 3-9 foliolate: leaflets are oblong to ovate, 5-15*3-7cm.

Flowers are waxy-white, up to 20cm in diameter. The petals bruise easily and become brown. Flowers have an unpleasant scent.

 

Fruit is ovoid, 12cm or more in length, with a hard wood shell, covered with yellowish-grey velvety hairs.  The seeds are embedded in a whitish powdery pulp which contains appreciable quantities of tartaric acid and potassium bitartrate.

Medicinal Uses

• A fusion of water and the white pulp used to treat fevers and scurvy related diseases.

Other uses

• It is believed that drinking the bark infusion will make one mighty and strong
• Tender leaves are eaten by humans as relish.
• Baobab powder is edible and contains large amounts of calcium, tartaric acid, potassium bitartrate.
• Seeds when soaked in water makes a palatable drink, the drink can also be mixed with mealie meal (huphu) to make porridge.
• The bark after pounding is used to make rope and floor mats.
• Bark can also be used to make paper but other sources are plenty and easier to obtain.
• Hollow trunks have served as houses, prisons, storage barns and places of refuge from marauding wild animals.

           

Propagation

1/ Seed can be collected from picked or fallen fruit. After crushing the hard woody shell of the fruit, the seeds can be extracted from the dry acidic pulp. The seeds are kidney-shaped, with a smooth, dark brown to blackish seed coat. It should be soaked in hot water overnight and planted in a soil mixture of washed river sand and compost (5:1).

Seed sown during the summer months is likely to germinate within two weeks. The germination rate is usually 90-100%. Seedlings can be transplanted when they are 60 mm tall. Weaning of the plants is critical before planting them out into the full sun. The growth rate is moderate to fast (500­800 mm) per year, especially for the first 5 years.

When they are young, baobabs do not resemble their adult counterparts, the stems are thin and inconspicuous, and their leaves are simple and not divided into the five to seven lobes of the adult trees.

3/ Seeds germinate well in a nursery where sufficient water can be provided. In nature they germinate only in very good rainy seasons. The seeds keep their vitality for years. Hard tests (seed coats) should be broached by being filed an immersed in hot water. Young trees soon develop a distended underground organ for storing water from which the tap and side roots emerge. Seedlings should be transplanted  only after water-storing bulbs have been developed and when they are leafless. The tree prefers well-drained soils and is sensitive to too much water and cold weather. Truncheons, so far, have been unsuccessful.