Tis Flowering Season!

Tis the season to be flowering and what jolly big flowers they are too!  The flowers are the size of a saucer, measuring up to 15cm across.  They have delicate white waxy petals which pull up like a lady's skirt when curtseying for the queen!  They open as the sun sets and within 20 minutes are fully dilated, so you can literally watch them as they open. The blossoms stay alive for just 24 hours so by the time the sun sets the next day the flowers are spent. Baobabs in South Africa flower have their peak flowering season in November and range in number from 10 flowers per tree to up to a thousand flowers per tree at a time!  Dr. Sarah Venter has spent two years studying the flowering baobabs making notes on variation between seasons, trees and landscapes in which the trees occur.  But aren't they just exquisitely beautiful?

Continue reading....

Find more interesting articles below

New Baobab Species – Fact or Theory?

New Baobab Species – Fact or Theory?

A new species of baobab, Adansonia kilima, has recently been described for Africa by Prof. Jack Pettigrew. This is significant because worldwide there are only eight species of baobab, six of them are in Madagascar, one is in Australia and one in Africa (Adansonia digitata). But what has always intrigued taxonomists is that the species […]

Read more
New Harvesting Season

New Harvesting Season

This week we had our first collection workshop for the year. It was a beautiful crisp winter morning. When we headed out it was very early and the dew still hung on the baobab leaves. Everybody was in high spirits for the start of the collection season. Baobab fruit have started to ripen and drop off […]

Read more
Fine Art Baobab Inspirations

Fine Art Baobab Inspirations

Heike Pander, a German artist who paints baobabs,  visited me over the weekend.  She is passionate about baobabs and will be exhibiting some of her baobab art along with her other paintings later on in the year in Germany. She says “my enthusiasm for the marvelous and enthralling nature of Africa has grown steadily. I am not […]

Read more