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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Fantastic foster parents for baby Baobabs

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Baobab wilding is about enrichment-planting of baobabs back into the wild.  To prepare for this we are growing baobab trees from seed. Some are in dr Sarah Venter’s nursery at EcoProducts and other trees are being grown by community members in villages around Venda, oftentimes with precious available water in the arid environments where Baobabs […]

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Baobab Fruitfulness

Baobab Fruitfulness

How old were your parents when you were born?  Not as old as the Baobab tree has to be before it's capable of bearing fruit. It can take a Baobab tree up to 200 years before it produces its first green-brown velvety pod-shaped fruit.  January is when Baobabs start to fruit and fruit production is highly variable between […]

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Baobab Tree Planting has a Mind of its Own

Baobab Tree Planting has a Mind of its Own

Sarah Venter’s Baobab Guardians tree planting project had reached its goal of 50 trees and so she believed the project was complete. But it seems the project has other ideas…

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