HOW ANCIENT ARE BAOBAB TREES REALLY?

I often get asked how old baobabs become. There is a lot of myth with most people believing that they live for up to 5000 years. I have been working with Dr Adrian Patrut, who has made it his mission to find the oldest baobab in the world. He has been at this for about 10 years, sampling trees all over Africa and publishing his results in Scientific Journals. So far the oldest tree dated was the multi-stemmed Glencoe Tree near Hoedspruit that was dated to 1800 years old.(see pic).  In Venda people often say that they live forever. I like to believe they do.

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A smelly potion to protect Baobabs at Mapungubwe

A smelly potion to protect Baobabs at Mapungubwe

A new method to help protect Baobabs from elephant damage at Mapungubwe has been suggested, hold your breath, it contains fermented elephant dung! Mapungubwe is one of South Africa’s national parks in the far north, bordering onto Zimbabwe and Botswana along the Limpopo River, well-known for its many beautiful Baobab trees dotting the typical rocky […]

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Look honey! I shrunk the baobab tree!

Look honey! I shrunk the baobab tree!

I  have never quite understood the appeal of bonsai, so I decided to see for myself what it was all about.  I visited Lampies Schoeman who has about 100 trees, surely one of the largest collection of baobab bonsai in the world!  He has grown and created most of his bonsai himself over the last […]

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Bernadette McCabe: Beauty of the baobab

Bernadette McCabe: Beauty of the baobab

Bernadette McCabe is a Fine Art – Documentary stills photographer based in Cape Town who has developed a deep passion for colour, light, style, mood & texture… and for the magic of telling a story through the lens of a camera and capturing it in a single frame.  She loves to  create imagery that will move […]

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