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🌳 Plants 🌳 Trees

The baobab

The baobab

📖 In short

The baobab is an amazing tree that grows in Africa, Madagascar and Australia. Its trunk is huge like a barrel, and its branches at the top are short and spread out like roots, so it looks as if it's been planted upside down! And it lives thousands of years.

🤩 Did you know?

  • Some baobabs live more than a thousand years.
  • Baobab's big white flowers open at night, and bats pollinate them.
  • There are many kinds of baobab on Madagascar.
  • A baobab's trunk can be more than 10 meters across.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 A water tank

A baobab's huge trunk stores an enormous amount of water in the rainy season to live on during the long dry season. That's why its trunk is so swollen.

🔍 The tree of life

In Africa people call the baobab “the tree of life”, because they use every part of it: they eat its fruit and leaves, make rope from its bark and rest in its shade.

💡 Monkey fruit

The baobab's fruit is big and fuzzy, with dry, sour white pulp inside that's rich in vitamin C. It's sometimes called “monkey bread” because monkeys love it. In Sudan people make a drink from it called “gongolez”.

🎯 A house in the trunk

Some old baobabs have hollow, very wide trunks, and people have even used some as storerooms or shelters.

📸 More pictures

The baobab
The baobab
The baobab

🧩 Test yourself

1 Why is a baobab's trunk so big and swollen?

2 What do Africans call the baobab?

3 A baobab's trunk can be more than ?? meters across.

4 Which picture shows “The baobab”?

🌳 Discover more

📷 Picture sources: Wikimedia Commons