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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Tis Flowering Season!

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, […]

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Film maker Greg Cameron: do less, do it better, make it matter more

Film maker Greg Cameron: do less, do it better, make it matter more

Recently, Greg Cameron was commissioned by PhytoTrade to make a film on baobabs in which he records the stories of the baobab fruit collectors and how baobab fruit help them improve their lives. Here, Itai Chibiya, PhytoTrade's Monitoring and Research Evaluator is being filmed while being interviewed.   EcoProducts was chosen as the site for the interviews.  Sarah […]

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Rescuing Mapungubwe ‘s Baobabs from elephant damage

Rescuing Mapungubwe ‘s Baobabs from elephant damage

Baobabs and elephants have been living in the same habitat for centuries. However, as the habitat for elephants shrink due to changing land use, they get boxed into fences with herds ever increasing on smaller and smaller patches of land. Baobabs and other trees are then being browsed more intensely, with the result that many […]

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