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 trees. Some trees never produce fruit even though they flower every year. Some trees produce only a few fruit a year and others produce huge quantities. I have been monitoring baobab tree fruit production in Venda for 7 years. The record was 1200 fruit on one tree, but this was highly unusual. Mostly they average about 65 fruit per tree per year. EcoProducts only ever harvests fallen fruit to avoid harming the parent tree.

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The hidden benefits of baobab oil and fruit powder

The hidden benefits of baobab oil and fruit powder

Annie Nenzhelele has been collecting baobab fruit for EcoProducts for a few years now.  Last week when I was visiting her village she said that she has been using the money she has earned for building her house.  She took me into her house to show me the bags of cement she  had bought to […]

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Training to assess Baobab resources in Zimbabwe

Training to assess Baobab resources in Zimbabwe

Dr Sarah Venter recently trained a group of ecologists on doing tree-health assessments in Zimbabwe. “We were looking at various aspects of baobab health that include the impact of elephants on baobab trees, bark harvesting and diseases.  This work took us all around Zimbabwe including the Hwange National Park, where the assessment team measured over 900 […]

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Dung Beetles and Baobabs

Dung Beetles and Baobabs

Baobab seeds are relatively large,but it’s not an impossibility that that germinating Baobab seedlings could use the manure buried by dung beetles to boost the growth of its first few shoots!

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