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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Baobab: ancient fruit in modern times

Baobab: ancient fruit in modern times

Baobab: is there some wondrous special quality which comes from eating the fruit borne by such very ancient trees.

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2015 May: EcoProducts Foundation: creating a culture of caring

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I decided to create the EcoProducts Foundation (a non-profit organisation) when I realised that simply providing employment to local Venda communities wasn’t enough.  I wanted to do more and decided to support early childhood development, which in these rural areas is very neglected.   In addition, the results of my PhD research revealed that goats and drought were hampering the growth […]

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where do you go with the baobab fruit?

where do you go with the baobab fruit?

Last week while on a photo shoot in Venda,  the harvesters asked me where I went with all the baobab fruit I buy from them.  So I said, why don’t you come and see?  We worked out the taxi money from Venda and back and set a date for the following Thursday.   The women […]

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